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...
Read the full article...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.