Expert: Norman Auspitz - 1/1/2010

Question
I work at an animal rescue.  We had someone bring us a stray cat.  She had the tattoo "SB" in blue in her ear. How can I find out what this means?

Answer
Dana,

I have no idea, but I will try to find you an answer. Usually, what is tattoed in a cats ear is a registration number.

Best regards... Norm.

Dana,

I sent some feelers out and received a number of replies (sanitized by removing any identifying information) of which the following 5 appeared the most useful.:

(1) "I don't know if it's SB or not but Neuter Scooter tattoos all the cats they spay/neuter in the left ear."


(2) "Allot of the  feral capture, spay, release groups will put a notch on the cats ear to show she was spayed and they can tell at a distance that she was done. I believe some of the rescue groups will mark the cat to show she is spayed. There are far too many cats taken in and opened up to be spayed that are already spayed, needless surgeries for the cat, and money wasted.
   
"Some vets have been trying to get a universal mark or tattoo required when any cat is spayed to avoid this. I think it is a common sense thing to do because most of the time you just can't tell. Maybe that is what the tattoo is....."


(3) "I have heard of cats being tatooed in the ear after spaying or neutering and released as a better option than clipping the tip the ear.  This is for cats in a colony and may have come from the Alley Cats Allies group."


(4) "The first letter may indicate spay and the second letter may indicate which colony the cat was returned to.

"Wait a couple of months and if there are no heat cycles (this being a prime time of year for same) then you have a good indication of this.  Another thing you can do is shave the belly with a surgical blade and look for the scar.  Some rescues place an S across the scar, too."


(5) "The tattoo is probably from a spay/neuter clinic. We have one here who tattoos everyone they fix, so that if they ever get turned into a shelter, found by someone as a stray, or (in the case of ferals) trapped, they know they are already altered and don't put them through the surgery again. They tattoo NS (for Neuter Scooter, the name of the clinic) in everyone's ear.  Some vets do the same thing.

"Is the cat altered? If it is, that is almost surely where the tatoo was from. If you are not sure (and it is a girl), shave the tummy and see if there is another tattoo on it (only some clinics do this.) or if there is a spay scar. Chances are that the cat is altered.

"The tattoo done by the clinics don't have to be very long. They are not IDing the cat, just showing that they are altered, so you can use the same one for all the cats that get done, instead of having to have different ones for each cat"



Best regards... Norm.