Ahhh, that old debate again. Many of you have probably heard it before. And many of you probably are already enlightened, I am sure ;) So why am I bothering with this article then? Because a lot of people still do not realize the consequences of refusing to spay or neuter their cats. Apparently, it is still necessary to address this. Every summer the amount of unwanted kittens is staggering and every year tons of those kittens die from neglect. Ask any shelter and they will tell you that the summer is the worst time of year for cats. Every year at least 25 percent of abandoned kittens (and I am being incredibly optimistic here) die.

Imagine being two or three weeks old, not even, when you find yourself in the baking sun, dumped at a parking lot without your mother. Or tossed out of the car for that matter. Or born to a mother who has no milk because she is only six months old herself, and has a hard enough time taking care of herself now she has been tossed out by her family and ended up a stray cat. This is comparable with tossing out your daughter at 15 years of age with no family to go to and no shelter to be found because she dared to get pregnant, although you never bothered to tell her what happens when boys take an interest in you. Would you expect her to be able to take care of her child? And would you toss her child out of a moving car? Or abandon it on a parking lot in a plastic bag while it is baking outside?

I have asked people (who actually still had the decency to bring their cat and her kittens to the shelter coz most don’t even bother) when I was a volunteer at a shelter, why they felt they had to give up their cat. It is a standard question. And their answer was:” becoz she had kittens”. At that point I want to drag those people across the desk, slap them silly and go: ”Hellooo, it is a female outdoor cat of a sexually mature age…what did you expect????”

So why, besides this obvious reason, would you spend money on getting your cat spayed, or even better, neutered? It is not like the male is going to come home pregnant, right? No..but he might bring home something entirely different that is equally unpleasant, that is, if he comes home at all…

Alright, straight up: what are the sacrifices you must make and what benefits do you reap by having your cat made sterile?

First of all, you have to pay. Yes, spaying does not come cheap, I get that. But it protects your kitty in more than one way. Neutering is a little less costly, and equally beneficial. How? Well, first of all, males and females that have not been fixed, are at a much higher risk of diseases. FIV, Feline Leukemia and the likes are much more likely to be transferred between sexually active cats. The males fight over territory and females a lot more when they are still high on testosterone, meaning that blood transfer is bound to happen. And females in heat get bitten by males who are attempting to mate with them. A male will hold a female down while he mates, by biting her in the neck. This is how viruses thrive. This is how disease gets spread in your neighborhood, and both FIV and Feline Leukemia are fatal. Feline Distemper can get spread this way as well and is in 60-90 percent of the cases fatal. Do you like those odds?

Another reason to get your tom neutered is the incessant fighting he will be doing while in testosterone-mode. And even if he aint a macho, there are plenty of macho’s out there determined on showing him that he’d better not get any ideas about demanding territory or even worse, claim one of their females. Also, as long as there are unspayed females in the neighborhood, your tom will be happy to stay. But do not expect him to stay if all females around have actually been spayed. What’s a poor tom to do besides follow his hormones and start roaming to be able to play the field?

What about indoor toms? True, they do not need neutering, but I would strongly recommend it. The problem with indoor toms is that at some point they realize that they need to protect their territory, which is limited by being stuck indoors. So what do they do? They spray. And any tom cat owner will tell you that there is nothing worse than the stench of a spraying tom cat except possibly a skunk.

Also, if you have say two brother tom cats, and they grew up so nicely together, they may one day decide not to like each other anymore since then they have to share territory. What will happen is that one will bully the other, which will live in frustration and fear. And that beautiful bond and close household you used to have? Poof, it goes up in smoke. This can still happen after neutering, especially if it was already going on before neutering. But it will definitely decrease some of the fights. And all that unnecessary testosterone-driven posturing and fighting will at least vanish.

Ok ok, I am doing some severe hormone-bashing, but this is reality. This is how these animals are biologically wired. We need to understand this, and act accordingly. Coz they don’t have religion to tell them to abstain, or that sex is bad. Hell, even if they did, we as humans know how well that trick works.

What about the girls? Well, a litter of kittens can be sweet and adorable. But in a cat’s world 1+1=6. Now multiply by 3, and again multiply by the number of female felines you have, and you get the number of kittens a year.

When I was 14, this number was 45 kittens a year. And that’s when my mom started sterilizing. Seriously, how in the hell are you going to find a good, responsible owner for all of them? And what are you going to do if the mother decides she doesn’t feel like being a mom? (some younger females, especially if they were taken away from their mom early on, have no clue what to do with those things that came out of her!) Are you going to handrear six kittens? Are you going to get up every three hours to feed them? And stimulate their anus so they will be able to poop? Yes, this is what mommy gets to do, people. And as with humans, giving birth takes a toll on your body as a cat, especially if the litters are one after another.

So what about the indoor female cats? They are safe from disease and pregnancy, right? That is correct. So those do not need to be spayed? Sure, they can go without being spayed…although I would not recommend it for your own sanity ;) I’ve had a cat in heat in the house several times by now (it’s a Lulu-thing, see the story 'some kitties need zippers'). You see, if your cat goes outdoors, she will probably meow there, and get impregnated immediately. But if your cat is an indoor cat, then the ‘symptoms’ of being in heat will be displayed there. And probably at night. While you try to sleep.

Now picture a cat completely nuts on her own hormones, mreooooooooowwwing throughout your entire house during the night, every night for a week. Then it sort of subsides for a week. And then it starts all over again. That’s right. An indoor cat in heat will come into heat every two weeks. Why? Because she aint outdoors. She does not realize it aint mating season right now so her biological clock just goes haywire. How long will you last you think? And more importantly, how long are you going to let the creature suffer on the verge of sexual anticipation?

And of course, during the day there will be a ton of purrrrrrring from your kitty, who by now is wiggling its ass in your face and squirming your entire carpet into a ball. And the moment you touch her to move her away, she mrrrrs in anticipation. The only way to stop her, is to satisfy her, by either giving her a tom cat or faking a mating. Or you can have her spayed. Your choice ;)

What about the procedure itself? Trust me, if there ever was a routine-surgery it would be spaying and neutering. In our clinic, tom cats don’t even have to be admitted into hospi for a day. All you do is make an appointment, don’t serve him any food for the 12 hours leading up to the surgery, and you can even witness the surgery as the doctor performs it. All this is over in twenty minutes. He will feel it for about a day, but he will get painkillers and before you know it, you will take your little boy home. And the only changes will be that he will most likely be a bit more cuddly and lazy and you will have to monitor his weight a bit.

Female cats do need to be admitted, since they need to have incisions into the tummy. But those are minimal, as only the ovaries are removed. You drop her off in the morning and pick her up in the evening. She will be drunk for a day, and the stitches will stay in for about ten days. At our clinic, the stitches do not have to be removed since they decompose on their own, although if they are still there after two weeks, you need to have a check up done.

Some female cats will have a reaction to the stitches (our Lulu had that). It looks really weird, it is like this big cone has been placed underneath the skin where the incision has been made. This too will subside. If it does not within five days, again, have the cat checked by the vet. They too get a painkiller and might not be themselves for a day. After that, you should have your kitty back to normal.

Female cats can also gain some weight after spaying, but in general you won’t notice any difference in your cat (there are exceptions to this)

What about feeling less feminine and masculine? Something a lot of owners worry about, since it is also something we worry about when talking about sterilization or castration of our own species. Well, according to science, we stay sexual creatures, even after these operations, because our mind remembers what it was like, and how it feels, and we can still fantasize about it.

Cats are not wired the same way. They are hormonally driven. There is nothing romantic about cat love. Procreation is the word. Since you take away the factors that cause that drive, they do not miss it, or are unhappy because of it. I doubt that they fantasize about sex like we do. And from all the cats I have seen spayed and neutered I have seen only two that were actually affected by it mentally. Unlike humans, cats do not think about sex everyday ;) They have a mating season where they just go crazy and then they get on with their lives. Take away that crazy season and they can still have a great life.

So do not feel bad about the snip-snip your boy has to undergo, it will benefit him greatly. Trust me; with the amount of painful abscesses from fighting you’re avoiding this way, he ought to be kissing his four paws ;)
And the same goes for your little girl. She will be utterly pleased not to be a teenage mom, which comes with a heavy responsibility.

And last but not least I would like to take the edge off a persistent myth that has been around for ages. It does not improve a cat’s health to have just one litter. That is bogus. So do yourself and your kitty a favor, and have kitty fixed. Life will be so much easier ;)