Oh whoa...

[elf_chic_arwen]

Definitely never thought I'd see something like this:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/fixed.cats.ap/index.html

Crazy, man. Wonder where it'll go... if other states will do it, too.

I mean, my dog is neutered. Any dogs (or cats, for that matter) I get in the future will be either spayed or neutered. I'm a huge advocate of it. I hate going to the dog

Comments

[rockstargrrrlie]

I'm a big advocate of spaying/neutering your pets, but I have to say that I really don't agree with it being a law. Any cat I ever have will be spayed or neutered, mostly for health reasons and in case they ever DO get out- but I don't think it's right to force other pet owners to do the same.

From everything I've learned from my stepmom over the past few years, the overpopulation of cats has little to do with pet owners not spaying their cats, and more to do with feral cat populations. A better way to treat the overpopulation would be to spay these feral cats- when my dad and Lex lived in Miami, there was a movement going on that would catch the cats, pay to have them spayed, and release them back into the wild. A great deal of pet cats are entirely indoor cats (as you know, Stella is terrified to go outside)- if a cat never goes outside or comes into contact with other cats, why require the owner to pay for something that's not really necessary?

[elf_chic_arwen]

oh I completely agree with you. Thus my uncertainty about what the implications of this law might mean for other states, and so on. You're definitely right, indoor-kept animals aren't really the threat here - usually those animals are spayed/neutered anyway, because the owners are responsible and would be careful not to let their pets get outside unsupervised. It's the irresponsible owners who abandon their pets after a move, or drop them off on the side of the road instead of taking them to a shelter, thus creating these feral animal populations in the first place. The whole thing is really upsetting to me, because so many animals are euthanized every year, over something they had no control over. Anyway, yeah, I agree that forcing owners to spay/neuter isn't necessarily the right way to go about combating the issue, at least in the long run.

[weezergirl85]

I somewhat disagree. I don't have the statistics handy, but "casual breeders" (AKA pet owners) cause A LOT of the problem. Feral cats are indeed a huge chunk of it, but ignorant pet owners contribute at least as much, if not more, to the overpop. problem. I'll dig out my Coppinger book later to find the exact number. The number of euthanized cats is higher than dogs because of the feral population, but the dog population is still ridiculously high and there aren't many feral dogs out there. So these animals are coming from someone, and there are just too many people wanting kittens for the miracle of birth and all that yadda yadda

[elf_chic_arwen]

Ahh yeah, see I definitely don't agree at all with the whole "casual breeding" thing... like, I don't think you should breed your pet unless you're actually in the business of dog breeding or showing, and pets are your passion, and you plan on devoting all of your time and energy to raising those pups. So you're absolutely right that those idiots out there are adding to the problem