Archived My roommate refuses to fix his cat without plans of breeding. Is this considered Inhumane? (AskVoat)
submitted ago by tyeis
Posted by: tyeis
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Archived My roommate refuses to fix his cat without plans of breeding. Is this considered Inhumane? (AskVoat)
submitted ago by tyeis
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[–] MaasofaniikDoDovah ago
Source: former shelter volunteer. It's not inhumane for the cat. But, it would be a better idea to get her fixed. If she did manage to get out at any point, and if she did get pregnant, he would have a load of kittens to be responsible for. Hypothetical situation here: she has four kittens, and all of the kittens are successfully given away, all four live to sexual maturity at their new houses. Now, let's say that the new owners also don't get these cats fixed, and they have the opportunity to breed- each cat could be a parent to four kittens. And the cycle repeats. A cat can reach sexual maturity at around six months old, so you can breed approximately two generations a year if the initial female was born in January. With that in mind, the hypothetical female(1) would have spawned four kittens(4), and these four kittens would have spawned four other kittens each (16). Within eighteen months, a total of twenty-one new cats have been bred into existence; compare this to the estimated 74-96 million cats in America. Countless felines end up in shelters, abused, neglected, and outright killed by civilians. You would not believe the amount of perfectly healthy kittens and cats that have to get euthanize every day just because of over-population. You bring in a litter- most of them will be put to sleep within three days of arrival at the shelter. Not enough people want enough of them- and shelters operate on a very limited amount of resources. Your local shelter most likely offers a program to help or completely cut the costs of fixing an animal. My cat got pregnant just a little bit before I was going to take her in. After she had her kittens, I paid the original thirty-five dollars for her and one of the male kittens to get fixed and the shelter did the other four kittens for free. This same stance can be applied to many domestic animals, not just cats.
tl;dr: No, it's not inhumane to the cat. Yes, it is unkind in the grand scheme of things.