Spaying your cat – for THEIR health’s sake

Some believe that allowing your cat to have a litter of kittens seems like a fun thing to do, while believe it helps their female cat to develop ‘more completely’ or become a better pet – however neither of these myths are true.

Even when advertised ‘free to good home’, people often find it difficult to actually home the many kittens that result from irresponsible breeding.

In addition, not all pregnancies go smoothly. Difficult labour, kitten mortality and potential health problems in the mother, such as uterine and mammary gland infections, can make the experience difficult and costly.

A surgical procedure called spaying involves the complete removal of the female reproductive tract. Not only does this prevent the animal from getting pregnant, but it also eliminates the heat cycles by removing the source of production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

These hormones play an important role in the female body with regard to reproduction, but for a cat they can prove potentially harmful. In humans, great efforts are undertaken to maintain or restore hormone production in the body, but the same is not true for cats.

Being ‘spontaneous ovulators’, a cat will release the eggs from her ovaries only if she is mated. If a female cat is on heat (a period lasting 16 days) and is not mated, she will come back into heat every 14 to 21 days until she is. Both physiological and behavioural patterns are evident.

Behavioural and hygienic problems include the female cat searching out male cats and frantically wandering from her home, and she may expose herself to the danger of traffic and fights with other animals. The howling of dozens of male cats at 2am will affect your behaviour as well as your cat’s.

Unspayed cats face a higher risk of suffering from mammary cancer, the third most common cancer in cats. Reproductive hormones are one of the primary causes of mammary cancer in the cat. Infections of the reproductive tract include the developing of a severe uterine disease called pyometra, a condition which is nearly always fatal.

Unspayed females may spray urine when they are in heat. This can be difficult to stop, and it is highly recommended that such cats are spayed as part of the treatment.

So, although you may spay your animals in an effort to help control a national problem, in doing so you also increase their chances of your cat living a long and healthy life.

DID YOU KNOW?

An unspayed cat and her partner, and her offspring producing an average of 2.8 surviving kittens per a litter, at a rate of two litters a year, adds up rather quickly:

1 year – 12

2 years – 67

3 years -376

4 years – 2,107

5 years – 11,801

6 years – 66,088

7 years – 370,092

8 years – 2,072,514

9 years – 11,606,077