hi everyone,
I have two bengals a 3yr old nutered male (tyke), and an 11.5 month old unnutered female(tinkerbelle)

My quetsion is about Tinkerbelle, as a kitten she was diagnosed with FHV and i guess as a result she has stayed quite a small cat. How ever when i discussed nutering her with the vet we decided to wait and see how stressed out she got with her First season, and also to ensure she was fully matured, as i have often found females nutered early tend to be smaller cats, the vet also felt it was best for her to build up her strenght incase the stress makes her shed the FHV again.

well as yet there is no sign of her coming into call and i'm just wondering what is the latest you have ever had a girl come into call. she is the same length as her big brother but where he is a wopping 19lb i would say Tinkerbelle is about 10 lb. i know in humans weight can have a large effect on our reproductive hormones and wondered if this might be the case.

I have attached a picture of her, i'm not really worried else i would have taken her to the vet.

thanks for your help

I had a conversation not so long ago with our vet about the size differences between males neutered at six months and those neutered at 12 months+.

The conclusion was that males done early will grow bigger in actual size but they might not always gain the neck girth and muscle structure that we all see in the stud cats, although he did add that even retired studs lose that over time once they've been neutered.

All to do with the growth plate hormones not recieving the correct signals upon maturity, resulting in extended periods of growth according to research.

Interesting stuff!

Back to your girl - I wouldn't worry too much about the FHV, just like humans we all carry the cold virus and only break out with the full blown cold if we are run down. The feline herpes virus is pretty much the same and provided you keep your cat more or less stress free and on a good quality diet she'll be fine, if it develops then act accordingly and quickly as it can be deadly in some cases if left untreated.....its really a matter of treating the symptoms rather than curing, as you probably know already considering the time she's been with you.

Has she had any problems since you've had her with the FHV?

Spaying if done cautiously and accompanied with a course of anti-biotics to build up her immune system would limit any flare-up I would think.....talk to your vet again and see what their opinion is on giving anti-biotics before and after the op.


The calling is different from cat to cat, some breeds only start at 18 months but in my experience bengals will have first called by 12 months old at least once. But after that its dependant on circumstances i.e any entire males present or other calling females normally induces things. Having calling girls close-by to one another just acts like a chain reaction with the end result being a pack of howling banshees....not a pretty sound at all!

Personally, unless there's a medical reason for taking antibiotics (bacterial infection), I would stay away from them. They put the body under additional stress killing off all the "good" bacteria while doing absolutely nothing against viruses, be it a cold virus or FHV. As far as I know, antibiotics actually weaken the immune system instead of strengthening it and it makes no sense to use them for viral infections as they only work against bacteria.