I would recommend against it. This time of year, especially. This is filmed in spring. There are so many cats out there that need homes and have kittens, especially in denser populations, where there are more cats than we have homes for. So cats don't have that maternal need like some people feel. It's more just hormones telling them to do things. Unless you really have a plan for the kittens, there are so many kittens in shelters that need homes. I would recommend against doing it for the sake of doing it. Mom doesn't need it, and we have more kittens. Don't wait because they become sexually mature very early. You don't want to think of your little kitten as having those tendencies, but suddenly they're pregnant, and then that's not the time you want to make that decision. Along those lines, there can be complications with pregnancy, like needing C-section and emergency situations. So it can be stressful to have kittens and a financial strain, more so than just simply having the kittens. It's not all just, they have them, and they all go away and find their homes. There's a lot more to it.

It certainly can. We recommend neutering sooner, as early as six months, sometimes a little before then, because as it goes on, sometimes behaviors can become habits. So a 10-year-old cat who's used to doing it may be driven by more than the hormones. Especially in our younger pets, it should help since a lot of that is a hormone-based behavior.

There are numerous reasons why spaying and neutering a cat is so important. With our females, the concern is always unplanned pregnancies and some medical conditions like uterine infection, which can be life-threatening. In our males, again, unplanned pregnancies, but also some of the hormonal influence leading to urine marking, trying to find the females when they're in heat, and that general tomcat smell.

I think the biggest misconception is the expectations around what happens after. So there's a lot of concern that animals will get fat, they'll get lazy, and that it may stop behavioral concerns. We have to watch and make sure that they don't gain weight just because they're maturing animals, so it's kind of like us in our thirties. The metabolism's slowing down anyway. That tends to be the bigger issue. That tends to be the bigger issue than the spay or neuter itself. We find that many dogs do not run into that issue, and personalities don't change. They don't get lazy, but sometimes it doesn't fix the behavioral issue we're looking at.

Can the neuter surgery help, especially the aggression after a certain amount of time, once testosterone gets out of there? Sometimes it depends on what the issue is. The more significant thing for males is it can cut down on urine marking, especially if that's an issue in the house. It can also cut down on wandering and trying to find a female in heat which always tends to be a big issue. So not having those hormones at play can help calm down some of those issues, but it does take a little bit of time. You don't have a neuter surgery, and then all of a sudden, they're not gonna roam anymore. It takes time for that testosterone to get out of there.

A neuter is a quick procedure, especially since you don't go into the abdomen unless you have to find a testicle that doesn't come down. But for the most part, a routine one is probably about 10 or 15 minutes. Depending on the size of the dog, a spay is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how big the abdomen is.

There can be. The biggest complication that we look for in our pets is excessive bleeding. When we remove the tissue, we cut off the blood supply to that tissue so that they don't keep bleeding. The concern is always if that isn't done appropriately or the dog has an issue with clotting, there could be a complication, but we triple-check everything to make sure that we are minimizing any risk of complications.

It is surgery, and it is an incision, so there can be a little bit of discomfort. But we give pain medication before, during, and after the surgery, including some pain medication to go home for you to give your pet, to keep them comfortable. We find that our animals do really well and seem comfortable pretty quickly after the procedure.

Neuters are a little bit less invasive. We move the testicles out of the scrotum so we can get to them a little more easily, remove the testicle and some of the spermatic cord and then close up the incision. That's in a nutshell.

We make an incision into the abdomen and remove the ovaries, all of the uterus down to the cervix, and then close back up the abdomen. So it's a little bit more invasive than neutering since you are going into the abdomen, but those are the tissue that we're removing.