Poor Charlie...

[niwikki]

she's still in heat. She's been crying day and night since Monday. I've been able to sleep at night by shutting her in the bathroom (with a litter box, food, water, 2 scratchers, and a bunch of cat toys

Comments

[voxwoman]

I didn't think a cat could go into heat after being spayed. We had a cat that went into heat (and wasn't yet spayed - she was, at the time, too young) in a 7th floor apartment - and her cries weren't as loud as the tomcats on the ground outside trying to scale the wall of the high-rise!

The worst part of that whole experience was when I put down a basket of laundry to close the front door (laundry room was in the basement), by the time I turned back around cat-in-heat had leapt into the basket of clean clothes and peed all over them!

[gyrbyl]

Cats usually don't go into heat after being spayed. On the other hand, sometimes fragments of ovarian tissue are left behind during a spay surgery, and if they manage to get themselves an adequate blood supply they'll stick around and keep making hormones. Sometimes they can be found and removed with exploratory surgery, but they're often too small to find.

[gyrbyl]

A few suggestions:

1. See if there's a breeder in your area that keeps a "teaser tom" (a male cat that's had a vasectomy instead of a castration, and will still mate with a female). Breeders will often have a lot of queens in heat all at once, and if they don't want to breed them they let them mate with the teaser tom to make them go quiet. In fact, since she's spayed and pregnancy isn't an issue, letting her mate with ANY (healthy) tomcat can end estrus or pseudoestrus symptoms early.

2. If that's not an option, some vets and most breeders can attempt to "simulate mating". Or, if you're not squeamish, you can try it yourself -- insert the end of a Q-tip in her vagina and gently spin it for at least 45 seconds. She will yowl when you do this, but cats usually do that during mating, and if you do it correctly you're not hurting her any more than an actual mating would (less, actually -- male cats' penises use barbs/quills to stimulate ovulation in the female).

[gyrbyl]

Oh, and it's probably not best to try the Q-tip thing on your own the first time... get a breeder who knows what s/he's doing to show you.