Nutering

Question
How soon should I get this male cat nutered and de-clawed?  I just got his last night.  Could you give me some tips on training him to go in the litter box.  He already went on my carpet.  

Answer
A male cat can be neutered as early as 5 months old, but generally its done around six months. I have a young male who just turned one; we had him fixed at 5 months. A cat should never be de-clawed. First you must understand that declawing is not cutting the claws - in fact what they do is cut off the tips of each of their "fingers". It is a terrible procedure. Some people do it on cats that insist on scratching everything but that is not the cats fault either. It is the owners. Cats can be trained with proper diligence. All it takes is a firm NO and gently moving the cat away from the bad activity. Repeat this often enough and they will never do it again. I have trained many cats and they all learned quickly and give me no problems. If you are worried about getting scratched or whatever you can learn to trim the nails. When you take him to the vet to be neutered, ask you vet to teach you how to trim the nails. It can be learned by you and just requires that you do it with care. As for the litter box, again this will require consistent diligent correction from you. If you see him going where he shouldn't, go to him and stop him in the act by picking him up and placing him right in the litter box. Don't hit, don't yell. Also, if you can't catch him in the act, then just forget it. If you try to communicate anything after the act is over, he WILL NOT get it. You also should try confining him to a small part of the house, maybe the kitchen or something; use a tall pet gate if there is no door or use another room that has a door to close off. In that confined space leave his water and litter at all times but place food there until he eats and then remove it. He is still young so you can train him just fine. Whenever he eats or drinks, just pick him up and place him in the litter box. he may not go right away but he'll start to get the idea of what you want. Between doing that and also putting him in the box any time you catch him making a mistake, you should corect this. You do need to make an effort to clean up where he already made mistakes though. You need to get a pet stain and odor remover - get it at a good pet store. Nothing else will do since if you don't get the smell out entirely, he'll go back there. Their sense of smell is stronger than ours so don't trust your nose - just use the right cleaning product as I have said and get it done right. Do this immediately to avoid future mistakes. Let me know how it goes and based on what is ghappening I will try to point you right.