Neutering of dogs and cats

Second Summer

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Clearly the overpopulation of dogs and cats is a serious problem that needs serious attention. Neutering is one part of the solution, I suppose, but it's not something I would do light-heartedly to a companion animal if I had one. I must admit the idea seems intuitively repulsive to me. But assuming I actually had a companion animal and needed to go through with it to ensure I wasn't contributing to the overpopulation problem, what is the best option? There seems to be several options to choose from. Today I randomly came across the below article (which is based on a PhD thesis). Apparently, local anaesthetics in addition to full anaesthetic can help alleviate pain during castration of male cats...

Surgical castration of cats and dogs leads to an increased tendency to postoperative coagulation and inflammatory changes
Dogs and cats that are sterilised or castrated develop a stress response: inflammatory changes and an increased tendency to coagulation after the operation.

An injection of local anaesthetic into the testicles of male cats led to a reduced stress response during the operation. However, the postoperative stress response in cats was not affected by the use of local anaesthetic. Similarly, the choice of sterilisation method did not affect the response in bitches.
Read the full article...
 
To be honest, I never it gave it much thought. Just figured it was something that should be done. I have never had a bad experience with any of my animals after they were neutered, nor have I heard of anyone else's animal having a negative reaction to the surgery. Interesting study, though.
 
One of my cats, back in 2003, had gone in for spaying and ended up having to be rushed to the emergency clinic and was put down a few days later. She never even made it to the surgery part, there were complications and neglect while they were preparing her for surgery. All the companion animals I've had since her, I've had fixed. So it hasn't deterred me from doing that. All the others have never had any kind of bad outcome.
 
One of my cats, back in 2003, had gone in for spaying and ended up having to be rushed to the emergency clinic and was put down a few days later. She never even made it to the surgery part, there were complications and neglect while they were preparing her for surgery. All the companion animals I've had since her, I've had fixed. So it hasn't deterred me from doing that. All the others have never had any kind of bad outcome.

Wow, that's terrible. So you are my first bad neutering story. :(
 
One of my cats, back in 2003, had gone in for spaying and ended up having to be rushed to the emergency clinic and was put down a few days later. She never even made it to the surgery part, there were complications and neglect while they were preparing her for surgery. All the companion animals I've had since her, I've had fixed. So it hasn't deterred me from doing that. All the others have never had any kind of bad outcome.
Hugs!

An ex's cat came back without the use of one of his back legs after being fixed. It started to come back a bit a long while later.

I still would get an animal fixed.
 
One of my cats, back in 2003, had gone in for spaying and ended up having to be rushed to the emergency clinic and was put down a few days later. She never even made it to the surgery part, there were complications and neglect while they were preparing her for surgery. All the companion animals I've had since her, I've had fixed. So it hasn't deterred me from doing that. All the others have never had any kind of bad outcome.

How awful. I'm so sorry, Rosie.
Never had a problem with any spays and neuters. It was always welcomed and not something I even considered opting out of. Not only does spaying and neutering help with the enormous overpopulation problem, but produces a calmer, happier animal as well (at least that's always been the case at our house-one tomcat spraying spree was enough).
 
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When I was a kid, one of the male cats we had neutered developed an infection and died. That had to have been due to poor hygiene practices at the vet's. Neutering a male cat or dog is such a quick and easy procedure.

I am such an immensely strong supporter of spay/neuter. I have seen firsthand, all my life, the suffering that results from failure to spay/neuter.

Avoiding progeny could of course be done through tubal ligation instead of by performing a total hysterectomy/removing the testicles. However, there are health benefits to spay neuter, such as avoiding certain types of cancer. And frankly, cats and dogs live much more contented and less frustrating lives if their sex drive is reduced by removal of the ovaries/testicles. A female cat, for instance, will go from one heat immediately into the next if she's not impregnated. And if you're ever around a cat in heat, it will quickly become obvious to you that she is a miserable, unhappy creature. In males, the hormones produced by the testicles result in aggression, spraying in the case of cats, and other behaviors that are problematic and/or dangerous to the animal. Hormones have a lot to answer for, and not just among humans.
 
At the spay & neuter clinic at our shelter, the male cats are not put "under" the way dogs and female cats are. They are drugged, but do not have tubes put down their throats. The reasoning is that the whole operation takes less than 10 minutes and is really quite simple for the vet to do.

We occasionally have a patient come back with a suture issue - redness, ooziness or a lump - but that is surprisingly rare. We have lost a handful of animals in the 2 years the clinic's been open, but only a couple have been pets; the rest have been feral cats.
 
From what I have talked with cat breeders, they actually recommendate neutering because health issues. And that is specially with female cats because every time they have heat they are in risk to develope infections to the woumb that can be really serious. From what I have understood the same thing goes with dogs (I'm not a dog person so I haven't really studied that area). So it's not only for stopping the overpopulation but for their health. Boys don't have that issue but it's just so much easier to live with boy cat that is neutered and doesn't pee oall over the house.

Mine have been neutered always and I have never thought it more than thing that needs to be done. Though since my cats are from shelter it's also part of the contract that they will be neutered if they aren't that already. The shelter though takes the neutering price as part of the payment that you give when you take the cat from them so if it's adult they have done it before they put the cat to adoption, but if you take kitten from them then it's prepayment and when it's time to do the surgery you just take the kitten to one of the vets that has contract with them. I think that has been pretty good way to make sure that people follow that contract that they write when they take a cat from them.

The weird thing that happened to me with my younger cat was that after the surgery she managed to jump so that she teared her skin from the surgery wound so that the clean I on her tummy looked like a T. She didn't tear her stiches but since the wourd was teared to other direction we had to go see the vet so that she put new stich on that part. It was something she had never seen in her carrieer to happen. But there is a first time for everything heh.
 
At the spay & neuter clinic at our shelter, the male cats are not put "under" the way dogs and female are. They are drugged, but do not have tubes put down their throats. The reasoning is that the whole operation takes less than 10 minutes and is really quite simple for the vet to do.

We occasionally have a patient come back with a suture issue - redness, ooziness or a lump - but that is surprisingly rare. We have lost a handful of animals in the 2 years the clinic's been open, but only a couple have been pets; the rest have been feral cats.

When my feline leukemia positive cat became healthy enough to neuter, my vet did it using only local anesthesia and a little Valium, because we didn't want to put him under anesthesia if it wasn't necessary. It's such a simple and quick procedure for a male.

Oh, and my vet recommended neutering because, in his opinion, the hormones take more of a toll on an immune-compromised male than the neutering procedure does.
 
When my feline leukemia positive cat became healthy enough to neuter, my vet did it using only local anesthesia and a little Valium, because we didn't want to put him under anesthesia if it wasn't necessary. It's such a simple and quick procedure for a male.

Oh, and my vet recommended neutering because, in his opinion, the hormones take more of a toll on an immune-compromised male than the neutering procedure does.

This is exactly what my vet said to me when we had Jean Claude neutered( he's our AIDS kitty).