You may have heard animal shelters and rescue groups say the best thing you can do to save animals is to spay and neuter your pets. But what exactly is spaying and neutering, and how does that REALLY save animals’ lives?

·         Spay- a surgery performed by a veterinarian to make a female animal unable to reproduce

·         Neuter- a surgery performed by a veterinarian to make a male animal unable to reproduce

So why is this surgery so important? Well think about this:

If you own a female cat and do not get her spayed, she will probably have lots of kittens.

How many kittens will she have? Well…..

On average, she could have 3 litters of around 5-8 cats a year. So if she has 3 litters a year, she would be having at least 15 new kittens every year.

But wait--What if those kittens get pregnant and have babies of their own?

If those 15 kittens grow up and became pregnant with 1 litter each, you would have 75 kittens!

But remember—cats usually have 3 litters a year so multiply that by 3!

So, 75 X 3 = 225 kittens! That means that in 1 year, you would have 225 additional cats running around your house! Remember, this is only in 1 year! After several years you could have thousands of kittens!

What do you think will happen to those 225 kittens+15 cats+1 momma cat?

Can you take care of them all?

You could try to give them away to your friends, but that’s a lot of cats to try to find homes for! You could let them all live outside, but they could get lost, eaten by predators, or hit by a car. The only other place you know can take the cats is your local animal shelter.

So—you call the animal shelter and ask them to please take your cats! 

The shelter tells you that they can take the cats but they only have 50 cat cages. So, unless you can find someone to take the cats, they will have to euthanize (put to sleep) the cats.

You have no choice but to bring the cats to the shelter and many of them are euthanized.

This is a very sad scenario, but wait—it hasn’t really happened yet! You CAN save these cats from being euthanized by ALWAYS SPAYING OR NEUTERING YOUR PET!!!

The next time you adopt a pet, make sure when he is around 5-6 months old, take him to your veterinarian to be spayed or neutered!