Why You Should Spay or Neuter Your Furry Friend

We all know we should spay and neuter our pets. We know it's more healthy for them. We know it's good for the pet population. But still, many people don't bother to spay or neuter their pets before letting them go outdoors. The pets may wander for a few days at a time, here and there, but nobody ever gets hurt, so why bother with the expense or hassle of scheduling surgery for a pet?

My family is a foster family for orphaned and abandoned kittens. Usually we foster older kittens, in situations where the landlord has found out the cat's owner has given birth, violating the "one pet per apartment" rule. Often, it's just a matter of weaning them that last little bit, and waiting for them to reach the two-pound minimum to be neutered or spayed and placed for adoption.

This spring, we were asked to take a litter of five kittens rescued from a home's insulation. Four were in the attic crawl space, and one fell between two walls, alerting the homeowner to their presence. The mother cat had not been around in at least 18 hours. Estimated to be 24 to 36 hours old, they were rescued at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday. They had ingested large amounts of the home's insulation, while trying to find their absent mother's nipples in all the fluff.

The person who rescued them was nearly hospitalized after being in the dusty, hot, filthy attic. It took her days to recover.

That Monday, each kitten visited a vet to have the insulation cleaned out of its mouth and throat. They were given IV fluids, and warmed to the proper temperature. While the vet worked, my family spent $40.00 on supplies that we knew would barely last a week. The vet did not give much hope that they would survive, after spending at least 18 hours alone. There was no way to tell how much insulation they had ingested, or inhaled. The first one died at 5:30 P.M. The second one died at 6:00, in the hands of my older son, as he was feeding them all. The third one died at 8:00, during the next feeding.

Throughout the night, we took turns getting up hourly to change the hot water in the warming bottle, and to feed the two remaining kittens. A feeding takes 20 minutes per kitten, meaning that the caretaker goes to bed for 20 minutes before the alarm goes off again. Finally, they seemed to come around a bend. On Tuesday, both kittens had IV fluids, and the vet warmed them up again, because the hot water bottle wasn't quite enough to do the job. On Wednesday, the vet again gave IV fluids and warmth, and the two sisters began purring, ever so slightly. They began cuddling and pressing into our fingers as we petted their tiny forms. On Thursday, she again gave IV fluids, and saw one of the kittens for what appeared to be an ear infection, due to the kitten's episodes of twitching her left front paw, and crying, every 15-30 minutes. There was no medicine weak enough to give her, so all we could do was continue to feed and nurture her, and listen to her frequent pained cries. On Friday, she again saw both kittens for fluids, warming, and a weigh-in. The kitten with the apparent infection was still a week away from being able to treat properly, so we were advised on how to keep her comfortable, and wait it out. Friday night was the first night we were able to go to two-hour feedings, meaning we got almost an hour of peace, and we were able to sleep 2-3 hours per night instead of 0-2 hours per night.

On Saturday morning, her twitching had spread from one paw to both front paws and her face. She stopped purring. The vet asked us if this was the kitten who had fallen, and been discovered between the walls. She was. The vet advised us that she likely was suffering from grave neurological damage from her fall, and that there was likely nothing we could do to save her. On the blind hope that it might be chronic low blood sugar common to kittens who aren't kept warm enough, we were given 60 milliliters of glucose, to give her one milliliter every 30 minutes, round the clock.

By Sunday night, we resigned ourself to her fate. She had stopped eating, we could only get the glucose and a few drops of pediatric electrolyte into her at each feeding. She stopped defecating shortly after that.

Sunday night, our autistic child screamed at us for being upset, before he pitched a fit that left our dining table overturned, three bedroom doors cracked, a brand-new doorframe destroyed, our glass patio door in a shambles, his brother's glasses broken, and his father's mouth bleeding. When he was finished, he sank to the floor, sobbing at the impending loss of the kitten.

Monday morning, we let her go.

The one remaining kitten, we spent $20.00 a week to continue to provide formula, bottles, cleaning, and veterinary care, for seven more weeks. We spent $30.00 in canned cat food in order to transition her to solid foods. She had a fall one day, from about five feet high, causing both of our children to go into self-blaming mode, thinking that she would certainly die from it, like her sister had. And once she was ready, we faced the task of letting go of the creature that we have raised and nurtured since she weighed under an ounce and her body literally depended on us to do everything for her.

A week after the kittens were rescued, not long after the fourth death, the mother cat was spotted. Her owners, not realizing she had been pregnant or that she had given birth, had kept her indoors for a week, because she seemed fairly ill and tired, but their vet could find nothing wrong with her. The vet thought they knew she had given birth; once they knew, the cat's lethargy made sense. She was only five months old. They thought she couldn't get pregnant that young. They were horrifyingly wrong.

This is just part of the true cost of failing to spay or neuter your pet. It's not that your pet might be a little more rambunctious for a few days. It's not that your pet will go roaming now and then. It's that your pet may contribute to the problem of strays in the neighborhood, of animals getting hurt in the streets, of too many young animals and not enough foster homes. Your pet's young may end up in a home like mine, being cared for by another species, dying in the hands of their caretakers, running up vet and food bills like mad. Our humane society charges $50 to spay a cat. We spent more than that in our first day of caring for this mother cat's litter. And for four of them, all we could give them was a warm, quiet, nurturing environment in which to die. If their very young mother had been much younger, much smaller, she probably would have died while giving birth, also.

It doesn't have to be that way. Spay and neuter surgery is relatively simple. In many cases, your pet will be ready to go home in only a few hours. You can purchase pain medication to give your pet at home for a couple of days, just like for human surgeries, and it helps them recover even faster. The fur will grow back. He won't be a girl. They won't get fat, unless you're overfeeding. Your pet will forgive you for a few days' pain, honest. Please, if your pet is not spayed or neutered, call your local humane society, animal control, or vet, and schedule an appointment, before it's too late. Don't let your pet create another exhausting, draining, heartbreaking situation for humane groups and volunteer foster families like mine.