Advantages of spaying:
Eliminates unwanted kittens. A well fed healthy female cat will easily produce over a
dozen kittens a year, year after year. Even if you find homes for your own, you will be
displacing other unwanted kittens that might otherwise have avoided starvation or a
one-way trip to the pound.
Keeps your cat from going into heat. If your six month old kitten begins to howl day
and night and climb the curtains, or if you hear her out raising a ruckus with other cats,
she's in heat and overdue for her operation.
Disadvantages of spaying:
May aggravate any preexisting tendency to be overweight. This can be controlled by
diet.
Recommendation:
Have your female kitten spayed when she is four to six months old, before coming into
heat the first time. Shelters often spay kittens before adoption. This is useful for
population control, although spaying at such an early age is not necessarily in the
best interest of the kittens themselves.
Advantages of neutering:
Eliminates strong tomcat odor.
Reduces tendency to fight with other male cats.
Reduces territorial urine marking, especially indoors.
Eliminates your cat's natural inclination to wander in search of a female,
reducing the likelihood of automobile accidents, gunshot wounds, etc..
Disadvantages of neutering:
Aggravates any tendency to be overweight. This can be controlled by diet.
Recommendation:
Although neutering household male cats cannot realistically be expected to have any
effect on pet population, it is important to eliminate the strong tomcat odor and reduce
the urge to fight. Male kittens should be neutered when six to eight months old.
Pros
Declawing is an effective way to preserve your furniture from damage by indoor cats.
If you've provided a good scratching post, and squirt bottle correction isn't
working, declawing may be a reasonable option. Once they recover from their surgery,
declawed cats seem perfectly happy and will even continue to scratch harmlessly on
the furniture.
Cons
The feet are sore after surgery. While four or five month old kittens are often
happily batting at toys in a day or two, older cats may seem sore for a month or even
longer. We give injections to control pain after surgery, but even so their feet
hurt afterwards. We discourage the operation for mature cats.
Declawed cats are less able to protect themselves, so the surgery may not be a great
idea for cats that sleep outdoors at night.
Deprived of the ability to scratch, cats that are aggressive toward people are more
likely to bite. Declawing is not a good way to deal with behavior problems.
What age
The ideal time for declawing is when kittens are four or five months old. The
furniture is still in reasonably good condition and kittens recover quickly from the
surgery. We often do the spay or neuter operation and declawing at the same time.
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