Reasons to Spay & Neuter Cats

Video Transcript

"We wanted to talk just quickly about spaying and neutering and how important it is, not only just to control the cat population. But, also for the benefits of the pet's health and the longevity. Kim, your cat at home has been spayed or neutered. Is that right? Neutered, yes. Ok. That's a male cat that's been neutered. Male cats are neutered. That means that we actually remove their testicles. And, the female cats are spayed. And, with the females we actually make an incision in the stomach and take the ovaries and the uterus out. A lot of people are kind of opposed to that for a lot of different reasons. But, we do have an overpopulation problem. Which, is what people most think about as far as what's going to be necessary to keep this cat from making too many kittens. But, with especially the male cat they develop a behavior of spraying once they hit sexual maturity. And, that means they start branding your house with urine. And, so in my view any indoor cat that's a male cat it's a slam dunk. You just have to get that done. There's a new method of doing it and they call it 'Early Spays and Neuters' when they do it at very young. Even at six weeks of age. And, the Humane Societies have done that to kind of stop the revolving door. They send an animal home and the people say they're going to bring it back to spray it and they don't. And, then they have more kittens. So, my feeling is that we have this cat in a real responsible indoor environment that between four and six months of age is the ideal time to get your cat neutered. And, it's a very simple process. We bring them in, in the morning of the day of the surgery. We do take a little blood sample to be sure they're healthy enough to handle anesthesia. And, we put them under anesthesia and we make a little incision on each side of the scrotum. And, we take the testicles out. These kitty cats wake up and they don't even notice it happened. They don't look back and lick themselves or worry about it all. The go home the same day and the owner's sometimes don't even know anything happened. So, we encourage you to get that done and my staff is going to send an estimate with you today on how much it would cost to get that done. Also, when they are under anesthesia we also monitor their heart rate and their blood pressure and their pulse OCS. So, we know that they're going to wake up and do ok. We use an inhalant kind of anesthetic when we put them under anesthesia. It's the same as they use in human medicine. And, it's the safest that it can be done. There's always a minor risk involved with putting any animal under anesthesia. But, when we take all of the precautions that I've talked to you about we always get a chance to send the kitty home with the owner."