The history of feline castration

[galerian_ash]

Question: When did people start castrating/neutering male cats? I don't need to know the exact year or anything, but rather a rough estimate in centuries.

Setting: A fairy tale-ish world. Since that includes magic and such I suppose I could wing the whole castration issue (I swear to God this isn't as dodgy as it might sound), but since the world

Comments

[st_aurafina]

At college, we were told that in the early 1900's you could bring your tom-cat to the pharmacy and they'd castrate it for you. (Along with performing pregnancy tests using frogs, selling ginger beer, and other such wacky, zany services.)

[felis_ultharus]

My understanding, too, is that it's a very recent thing. Human beings generally castrated farm animals -- and have been doing so for millennia -- as part of eugenics or to keep them docile.

Yet even as recently as the 1950s, the farm my mother let the cats remain half-feral. Only when they got old were they allowed to stay in the house, and getting human food was a special treat. They also reproduced however they pleased.

[rosehiptea]

I visited a farm like that in the late 1980s. The guy just sort of "had cats" and they hung out outisde and made more cats. I'm not endorsing the practice and as a city person it shocked me but I didn't get the impression it shocked people there.

Which I guess doesn't help the OP. James Herriot mentions neutering cats in... maybe the 1940s? in his books but that's pretty recent.

[cmar_wingnut]

I'd say the problem is obvious and exactly what you mentioned - cats have a lot of kittens, and excess kittens were disposed of by drowning or otherwise died in infancy. Nature's way, yes (except for the drowning) but pretty shocking to those of us who love cats.

[red_inuzuka]

I doubt it's that old of a practice. Most cats were outdoors back then, so who cared if the male cats peed at every tree or fought all the other boys in the block? I think if you can figure out when they started staying indoors more often, you'll have a better idea when sterlization became more common.

[scott52760]

That would be at the time kitty litter was introduced, right?
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/lowe.htm

[sushidog]

Dirt-boxes have been around for longer than kitty litter, though. And plenty of indoor cats now don't use a litter box (they go outside instead; cats are very easy to housetrain), so I don't think the invention of kitty litter reflects much on the introduction of castration.

[wordsofastory]

Castrating other male animals (oxen for cattle, wethers for sheep, etc) has probably been going on for around 5000 or 6000 BC in Europe in the Middle East, at least*. However for these animals there are logical reasons to do so (wethers produce the most/best wool, oxen are the best for pulling carts or plows), and there's not such a motivation to do so for cats. But, if you want your cat to be castrated, certainly anyone in a vaguely medieval world would know about the general idea for other species.

*Sources: I don't have a specific website for you, but google anything about the "secondary products revolution", and you'll see this.