I agree with the message in Erik S’s note

Erik, could you say that again in English?

PETA advocates the sterilization of animals dogs and cats. More specifically spaying and neutering. You can read more here http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=134 but for a quickie read of why we push guardians to spay/neuter their companion animals:

One unaltered female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 dogs in six years, and one unaltered female cat and her offspring can create 420,000 cats in seven years. Shelters are overrun and many end up euthanized.

Sterilizations are among the most routine and safest surgeries veterinarians perform. The health benefits they offer far outweigh any small risks. For example, spayed females have no risk of uterine or ovarian cancer, and are far less likely to develop breast cancer. Neutered males have no risk of testicular cancer and are less likely to develop prostate disease.

Sterilizing animals also makes the community safer, because sterilized dogs are three times less likely to bite. Dogs who have been neutered are also far less likely to roam far from home or fight.

This is the safest option.

Thanks!

I agree completely with Erik on the subject of male sterilisation: it should be done by vasectomy not castration. I too am amazed that an organisation that concerns itself with animal rights should advocate the removal of the most basic of rights - the right to be a sexual being.

I agree with Joel

sorry, but castration for males, and hysterectomies for females is the only way to go……….it stops the fighting and diseases that go with being “intact”. uncastrated males fight for territory and the “right” to have “sex” with a female………..they are always covered with bloody scars ( i know…….i feed may stray cats in my neighborhood). and the females are raped…they don’t want sex…..it’s nature’s drive to procreate that causes it……….why be raped if you can’t procreate??

nope…..sterilization is not the answer.

Dear all,

allow me to reply to each of you:

First of all many thanks and cheers to Anthony and to Amy - while your notes almost need no further comment.

Only to Amy, just to be correct:

In some cases humans ARE castrated, indeed.
It has often been done to individuals who were abused as slaves in harems or as countertenor singers, further quite in general as a punishment or torture, also to “heal” psychopaths or people declared as such, and more or less unavoidably in case of maleficent diseases like tumors; but sometimes even for pure prevention of POSSIBLE complications, especially to older women who want neither to have any more children nor to be bothered by their period. Many people still believe it beneficiant to cut out all organs they discern as useless due to their limited cognition - like tonsils, appendices, and even natural teeth which could possibly ache one day so it seems favourable to replace them by dead substitutes.

And such allover prophylaxis, in principle, is the main argument by veterinary doctrine for its usual practice of castration. Sure enough, their statistics are very impressive since an erased member can never hurt again in almost 100% of thoroughly studied and proven cases; so as a matter of course the most healthy condition a creature can eventually obtain is perfect death.

Which forceful conclusion will lead me to some precarious aspects risen by Mary and Jodie to whom I have to revert seperately.

Dear Mary, dear Jodie - as it seems the both of you touch the same point:

I am very aware that many people have their animals castrated actually to bend their beastly nature, still far apart from any thought about contraception: They want nice clean pets who don’t exhale any smell, don’t do the nasty 4-letter word sticking their x-rated pricks and cunts together perhaps while children are watching; but better devotely snuggle around their owners’ feet.

Such concern is not too much different from the common practice of castrating pigs - while that is usually executed without any pain relief ! - only because their devourers don’t like the horny taste from pork and sausage which might remind them of something inside their pants …

Yes, intact cats ARE fighting and straying and this keeps them strong and healthy from deep inside - regardless of some scratches and even worse.

Please don’t try to be wiser than nature !!!
This cannot be our task as protectors of animals - which is of prior urgency against human torture and abuse ! -
and not even our right !

Morever, Mary, how can we dare to devolve human moral concepts not only to particular actings of other animals but even to their entire constitutional essence and predisposition ?

Certainly a cat’s behaviour and chanting during her sex is much different from what we are usually teached to be tender and natural especially by educational advertising or soft core movies. But strange enough, the uneducated wild gals quite usually keep watching how the furry boys come to blows, evidently just waiting to get laid instead of betimes running off like you and me probably might react …

No: Right as PeTA’s ABC campaign distinctly declares, we have to avoid myriads of helpless babies facing a hopeless, deadly life; the impact of which unfortunately enough affects their impeded mothers’ fates and feelings up to a fairly appreciable degree anyway, as there is very likely an inherent need and physical urge to bear and raise children. But NOT just by the way try to correct nature’s inconveniant features, undertaking to oppose or change her innate principles - and least of all by crude physical correction, by cutting out most sensitive parts of the living body !

Jody, as it seems you HAVE done worthy research, viz right amidst real life instead of a sterile lab; just the same as I did - and we came to very similiar findings though vastly different conclusions:

I have lived with many cats in many places, sterilised as well as castrated pussies, though I never had executed such treatment to any of them but still had to accept them as they were. And allowedly the castrated ones are extremely cute and dinky - like helpless children in their heart-warming surrender. They also show a weaker constitution, get several ailments, but also heavy diseases, instead of scars and vulnerations; and by far most of them get really FAT as the poor babies have no other meat left in their meaningless lives than to EAT. Which mostly means nothing else but to BEG for food since they have no chance to chase their prey long as they are kept in appartments. An overall status of tiresome, monotone deprivation.

Jody, it is your very personal attitude if you like your tomcat to come home each night; and originally it appears not really adequate to HIM as you first had to mutilate him ere he became the harmless pet you prefer. By the way, I was talking about MUTILATION which means maiming, truncating, dismembering, crippling; not only to MUTATE !

And if it were not thus sad, I would remark that I am definitely glad not to be married to you, because I really enjoy straying all night at least from time to time - and I don’t want to think what you might do to your poor husband …

However, there is no need for any costly ABC research and its funding, as sterilisation of males is very well developed and even proven by numerous human experiments: It is simply clipping the spermatic ducts, of course under anaesthetic.

But I think even this is virtually useless: Though it might sound unfair and unequal, males don’t get babies, while animals don’t marry. So any one fertile gal on heat, as long as not imprisoned, will easily find at least ONE fully generative boy within her surrounding, no matter how many of them we have yet sterilised or castrated. And this one guy can easily inseminate a whole population, so all the others’ sacrifice is in vain.

And since ABC campaign is mainly aiming for outdoor animals who suffer most from unprovided-for offspring, we should definitely focus on STERILISATION OF FEMALES: As this is the decisive key to halt overpopulation right where any offspring springs up - and nothing else!

Therefore, Jody, I can hardly follow why you complain there is no other option available than castrating boys. Neither is male sterilisation exceptional of a medical procedure, nor is it really crucial for the paramount effect.

Well, certainly I would like to believe that you had your cat castrated on the intention to help, and not to mutate or mutilate; alas this don’t make much difference in results to the victim of that operation. But please clearly mind and examine your actual target: Are you talking about options for contraception, or for making animals domestic and tame ??? Please remember the latter is definitely not an objective of any ABC endeavours !

Finally, I am fully aware that potent cats running free often stay out very long and are permanently exposed to several dangers, including severe and deadly incidents. But for myself, I would emphatically prefer to be dead or even eaten instead of castrated - notwithstanding all my great aptitudes to go out dancing, to watch theatre and opera, to hear music, read or write books and so many more much better avocations than begging in front of the fridge.
And as a fact, you did - and will - never hear your happy boy’s decision about YOUR choice to castrate him. So, as we all have little chances ever to hear our fosterlings vote or veto, we should properly keep our hands off their intactness as long as there is no imperative exigence.