If you are a pet owner trying to decide if you should neuter or spay your cat, consider these reasons for spaying or neutering your pets.
- Controlling the animal population: Millions of animals end up living as strays, often due to unwanted litters of cats and dogs. Strays can interfere with wildlife, families, and household pets, and can scratch, bite, cause accidents, and create problems for neighborhoods.
- Preventing unnecessary euthanasia in shelters: Over 3 million dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters each year due to overpopulation. Many of these animals are healthy and safe but there are not enough owners to care for them. Spaying and neutering cats are effective birth control methods that help to prevent overcrowded shelters.
- Cost: Unwanted litters are expensive and time-consuming to care for if your cat isn't spayed or neutered. Spaying and neutering is cost-effective in the long run and there are also clinics and humane societies that offer services for low-income families to help cover the cost of these procedures.
- Improved behavior: Neutered male cats are more likely to stay at home rather than wander to try to find a female by roaming the streets of your neighborhood or urinating throughout your house and yard to mark his territory. Spaying and neutering can also prevent aggressive behavior like biting or fighting with other animals later in your cat's life.
- Prevents side effects of heat: When female cats are in heat, which can occur every three weeks during a breeding season, depending on your cat's cycle, they will become very loud, bleed and frequently urinate in order to attract males. These effects can be a nuisance in your home and neighborhood.
- Disease prevention: Owners that spay their female kitten before her first heat can help to prevent diseases like mammary and ovarian cancer and uterine infections which are highly fatal in cats. For male cats, neutering before the kitten is six months old can prevent testicular cancer.
- Spaying and neutering is not unhealthy: Any loss of energy levels due to spaying and neutering a cat are minimal and will not cause obesity. Overfeeding and lack of exercise are the main causes of weight gain and can be easily prevented with a healthy diet and active lifestyle.
- Neutering creates a less allergenic cat: Studies have shown that a neutered male cat may cause less allergic reactions in humans due to a drop in hormones that causes major cat allergens.