The suffering you will have prevented

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A pair of kittens before being spayed and neutered last week at the Marin Humane Society in Novato, Calif. 

Marin Humane Society  is credited with opening the first private, low-cost spay and neuter clinic in the U.S

I received a link to a great article this morning from Mariette's Back to Basics. The article informs that fewer pets are being killed due to spay and neutering programs - and isn't that just brilliant news! 

The news comes from Los Angeles and here's a small extract:

"It took years of campaigning to change thinking about sterilizing pets, but it has paid off. This year fewer than 4 million unwanted dogs and cats will be euthanized, down from as many as 20 million before 1970.

There are several reasons: Aggressive adopt-a-pet campaigns are carried out every day in cities all over the country and breed rescues save many dogs. But animal experts believe spaying and neutering has played the biggest role in saving so many lives.

Nearly every public shelter, private rescue or animal welfare organization in the country donates money, space or time to low-cost spay and neuter clinics.

Spaying and neutering has become the law in some states, counties and cities. Many states require all shelter animals to be sterilized. Rhode Island requires most cats to be sterilized, and Los Angeles requires most dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered by the time they are 4 months old.

While shelters are firmly onboard, the biggest problem has been selling sterilization programs to pet owners."

And this is where I would like to place a comment myself...

I've come across this regretable attitude several places (countries), in particular here in Greece. I'm not sure what kind of conviction this stance comes out from - some religous (and no offense) but mostly I think just out of pure ignorance. If anyone has ever watched the miserable suffering of a cat born in the wild (and dogs too) it might make them change their mind. Truly and seriously.

If you've ever been responsible for having just one female cat spayed - just take a moment to appreciate these numbers:

• The average number of litters a fertile cat can produce in one year is 3
• The average number of kittens in a feline litter is 4–6
• In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can theoretically produce 420,000 cats
• Only 1 in 12 of those 420,000 cats born find a home! (based on estimates in America)

That is a WHOLE lot of misery and suffering you will have prevented from entering into this world!

On top of this... if only ignorant people knew how safe, simple and fast these procedures are. I've observed both spaying and netuering - both is done with very small incisions and with the use self-absorbing sutures (no sutures needed for males in what I've observed). It's all done in no time.

Thank goodness for those low-cost spay and neuter clinics appearing in America. I wish it'd spread all around the world.  

You can read the full article here.