Socialization
The kitten must stay with his mother until he is 3 months old. Taken away from his mom sooner, the kitten will probably have socialization's problems.
The socialization starts on the kitten second week of life and continues up to the 12th. During that time, the kitten learns by playing: he discovers other cats, learns how to communicate and discovers how much bites or scratches hurt.
During these games, the mother teaches the kitten how to behave. Then, he walks away from his nest and learn by his own experiences.
When he's 12 weeks old, every new thing scares him and that is when he learns how to react in front of a danger. To increase the kittens learning skills, you have to play often with them, to stimulate them and to make them hear many different sounds. They'll be happy to play with you and it will help socialization
Vaccination
Kittens are protected from their birth to the age of 2 months by colostrum and antibodies they drink in their mother's milk. After that, natural defenses lower and they need to be vaccinated. Vaccination stimulates immune system and helps the kitten avoid some dangerous illness.
Early age neutering
The early age neutering is to sterilize a cat before the age of 5 months. Here are some benefits:
For the male kitten:
At the age of puberty, the male cat will mark his territory (… your house…!). He might urinate on your walls, the bottom of your furniture, your shoes, your bags, etc. Sometimes, he'll mark just a little… But the odour his really strong and won't go away easily…!
Also, a sterilized cat won't feel the need to fight with other cats, which will lower the risk of injuries and sickness transmission.
For the female kitten:
Female can also mark her territory when she has her heats. She'll prefer soft places like your bed or your couch. To neuter her before her first heats will lower the risk of breast and uterine tumour (90% are malignant) and "metrites".
Some people think that the female needs to have a first litter to be really happy and healty… But that's not true! Female that has never have kittens is as happy as another one, maybe even more because she won't feel the sickness of the heats! In fact, heats can be a danger for cat's health as can be the pill to avoid heats wich is a real poison and should only be given for a short term by a veterinarian.
Sometime, cats sterilized after having reach maturity keep their bad habits, like marking. Early age sterilization avoids them.
Why does the breeder chose early age sterilization :
By chosing the early age sterilization, the breeder wants to make sure the kitten will be happy and healty. He also wants the family who adopt the kitten to live this adoption without the problems that can bring not neutered cats (as you can read above).
He also wants to protect his hard work of breed selection to preserve the breed standard. The chosen purebred cats need to have very specific characteristics to preserve the breed look and behaviour. Each breed is described with really precise standards and the breeder must try to follow them as much as possible. By doing that, every breeder try to improve the breed genetic (by eliminating some problems) and morphology. More than that, breeding isn't easy and need a lot of financial and moral investments, especially during birth and wean.
No European nor American study prove that early age sterilization can be bad for cat's health and development; so early age sterilization is not dangerous for your kitten.
Interesting documentation (english) : http://www.winnfelinehealth.org/Pages/Early_Age_Altering_Web.pdf ( partie du texte de Hélène Sarraute )
