Why is spaying or neutering your cat so important?

Spaying and neutering your cat has a ton of benefits. Number one, we're less likely to have a lot of unwanted cats and kittens. They can't find homes, or they might be out in the wild. Two, it has its medical benefits because the cats can't get testicular cancer, ovarian cancer, or breast cancer because they have been spayed or neutered. Behaviorally speaking, the male cats are not going to roam as far, they're going to make just a little bit better pets, and they're not going to get in fights with other cats. The girl cats won't come into heat three to six times a year. And in both cases, it will decrease the chance of them having sexually transmitted diseases.

With female cats, their behavior is about the same but they don't come into heat. They can come into heats many times per year and they are meowing a lot, as they're uncomfortable. Their behavior is definitely different than your normal cat. The male cats are going to wander further away if they're outside. They can get into catfights with other cats and so they also do spraying, as spraying is marking their territory. And they're most likely to do that if they're unfixed. So by neutering though, we're going to reduce a lot of those behaviors.

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.

It's really important to help decrease the amount of roaming that your pet may do. Their hormones drive them to roam and seek out a mate. This is often how cats can get hit by cars and attacked by dogs, coyotes, et cetera. When we spay and neuter them, that hormonal drive will decrease, so they're more likely to stay closer to your house. The other reason why it's so very important is that there are health risks associated with leaving them intact. In female cats, after they have a heat cycle, their uterus can get infected, and it can become a term called pyometra, which is a fancy word for saying that the uterus can fill with infection and pus and nastiness. Think of it like a giant abscess inside your belly. That's a pretty big emergency. It is life-threatening. It does have to be handled surgically in a very quick manner. It always seems to happen on the weekends, and people will end up at the emergency clinic having to spend quite a lot of dollars trying to make sure that cat survives versus having a routine spay done at your regular veterinary clinic where the conditions are controlled and obviously is a lot less expensive.

Spaying and neutering your cat is very important because these organs can eventually develop cancer as the cats age. It is beneficial to remove these organs at an early age to prevent potential cancer development. Another key benefit is in female cats, they are predisposed to developing a condition called pyometra. Pyometra is a serious infection in their uterus that occurs every time they come into heat or every time their body cycles. This condition can be very life-threatening and sometimes you don't realize it until it's too late.