Please spay and neuter your pets
July 14, 2008 at 12:19am | Category: General | Comment?I had the unfortunate luck of finding the direct result of not spaying and neutering cats: sick, abandoned kittens. There were five in all, being eaten from the inside out by maggots. All had maggots in their eye sockets, maggots coated on their hind legs and tails, and maggots wriggling in and out of their protruding, bleeding rectums. All five cats were dying a slow, painful death in which they could do nothing but cry and wiggle about on the ground.
Even if your cat or dog is an inside pet, you should still have them altered, just in case they do ever get out. There are several other reasons to have them altered, including decreased risk of certain types of cancers and cysts, and better disposition. For dogs, male aggression is significantly reduced. For cats, the scent of the urine is also greatly reduced.
Just as importantly, do NOT feed strays. As tempting as it is to feed a stray, do not. Instead, take it in and care for it as a pet, if you’re able and the stray is friendly. If not, trap it, or call your local shelter/animal welfare agency, and report the stray.
As cruel as it sounds to not feed a stray cat, remember this: if that stray cat sticks around because it’s given food and possibly shelter, it’s going to mate, it’s going to reproduce. One female cat can produce 22 kittens in a three year lifespan. That’s a lot of kittens that are risking injury, torture, and slow deaths like the ones I found faced.
When you encourage a stray cat by feeding it, rather than trapping it or having an animal welfare agency trapping it, you are:
1) encouraging reproduction, which results in more unwanted cats
2) drawing other strays to your home and neighborhood
3) risking the spread of disease, as stray cats may often be carriers of rabies, FIV or other diseases that can be spread to humans and even other animals
When you don’t neuter your own pets, you are running the risk of it reproducing if it ever got out.
This post has been brought to you by the awful night I had last night, in which I found five maggot filled two week old kittens in a nine hour period, and made two late night trips to a 24/7 emergency vet clinic to have them euthanized. Oh, and a $188 vet bill. And a lot of tears and grief.
The tannish spots/gritty areas are maggots. They were also in their eye sockets.
Full story on jenn.nu: This is how a heart breaks
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