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08/12/2004
Male factor
The cat is seven months old. Predictably but alarmingly, he's begun to show signs of coming to sexual maturity. I stopped allowing Paul to call him a kitten some weeks ago, insisting instead that he had become a man-cat.
A man-cat with certain...desires. One night when I was chatting with Jo, he lay sleeping, sprawled across my lap on his back. Suddenly he began to twitch. Then to jerk. Then almost to spasm. It was then that I noticed the tiny catly erection he sported, not unlike the tip of a carnation pink Crayola. "AGGGGGH," I typed frantically to Jo, and unceremoniously jettisoned the cat before he, ah, reached his dreaming climax.
AGGGGGH.
So today I took him to be altered. Although I admired the tidy compactness of his fuzzy feline scrotum, it was time for it to be surgically neutralized. I deprived him of food, stuffed him into his carrier, and dropped him off at the veterinarian's office this morning.
Not long after I got home, the doctor called. Preliminary investigation he felt my cat up had revealed that the cat's testicles he handled my cat's nut sac were both undescended he found no cat balls anywhere.
And you know what's true about undescended testicles? "Undescended testes could not produce sperm even if medical intervention could relocate them."
Our cat is infertile.
The procedure for removing undescended testicles is more involved than a garden-variety neutering, but we're having it done, since the presence of the testicles would still cause undesirable testosterone-fueled behavior (getting into fights, spraying the furniture, leaving his underpants on the floor, and writhing in erotic ecstasy on the lap of his appalled owner).
Our cat's lifelong dreams of fathering a litter were impossible, even without the operation. I will break the news to him gently. I will try to explain as he eyes me forlornly from within his lampshade. I will tell him he just wasn't meant to become a parent. And, despite the persuasive evidence to the contrary ("You let them do what to me?!"), I will swear it's not my fault.