The Benefits of Spaying or Neutering Your Cat

BLVD Cat is all about the well-being of our fabulous feline friends! Our primary focus is to keep your cat healthier for longer. One way we achieve this is by advocating for the safe and common practices of spaying and neutering at an appropriate age. We recommend that you get your cat spayed or neutered for numerous reasons.

Do it for their health:

On average, altered (spayed or neutered) cats live longer, healthier lives. This is partly due to a decreased urge to roam away from home, which results in a lowered risk of injury from accidents or fights with other animals. Also contributing to the increased longevity of altered cats is a lowered rate of certain serious medical conditions. Spaying your female cat eliminates the potential for them to develop uterine and ovarian cancers, potentially life-threatening uterine infections, and significantly reduces the likelihood of mammary cancers. Neutering your male cat eliminates the potential for testicular cancers and significantly reduces the likelihood of prostate and perianal cancers.

Do it for your community:

Everyone is affected by animal overpopulation. Human health can be threatened by animal attacks and transmittable diseases from animal bites. Animal shelters and humane societies today face a tremendous burden of pet overpopulation. They do their best to find these animals loving homes, but are often understaffed and operating with limited resources and inadequate budgets. The number of stray, unwanted, and abandoned animals far exceeds the number of willing foster and adoption homes. Millions of tax dollars are spent annually to shelter and care for these animals, but sadly, millions of animals are euthanized in these facilities every year.

Do it for you:

Altering your cat will result in a wide array of behavioral benefits for you as well. Spayed females will not go into heat, which will eliminate the yowling/vocalizing, nervous pacing, and frequent urination that are commonly seen during this time. Neutering your male cats can prevent mounting and humping, urine marking, aggression, and decrease their desire to go roaming for a mate. For multi-cat households, all the cats usually get along better when all the animals have been altered.

Altering your cat is also very cost-effective. The average cost of a spay/neuter surgery is significantly less than the cost of providing for a litter of kittens. The expenses that go into treating reproductive cancers and infections are multiple times higher than the expense of a routine spay/neuter surgery. You are also less likely to accrue costs towards treatment of fight wounds and accidents or household destruction from the behavioral issues mentioned earlier. Additionally, many counties are now enacting laws that require owners of intact animals to pay higher licensing and renewal fees compared to owners of altered animals.

Now, let’s debunk some common myths:

Altering your cats will not change their fundamental personality nor remove their protective instinct.

Altering your cats will not inhibit their ability to learn, work, or play. Most studies have actually found that altered animals are more responsive to training as they are less distracted.

Altering your cats will not directly cause them to become overweight. Altering animals has been shown to slightly decrease their overall metabolism, but regular exercise and preventing overfeeding will keep your pet at a healthy weight.

Assessing the Risks

While spay and neuter surgeries are very common and considered routine procedures, it is important to remember that they do require your pet to undergo general anesthesia. Severe complications from general anesthesia are very rare, but there will always be a low level of risk inherent with these procedures. That is why it is very important to make sure that these procedures are performed as safely as possible by a veterinarian you trust.

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