I feel guilty for neutering my tomcat

[solomonar]

Three years ago I neutered my tomcat, after keeping him integer for more than 6 years, and love him as it was, despite the blame of almost everybody around me.
I can't forget his eyes when I let him to the vet surgery table, and even now I can't board the bus the line I transport him from home to vet office.
Now he is calm and he looks in my eyes sometimes.
I can't say more.

 

[Caspers Human]

Cats don't even know that they've been neutered. Take some comfort from that.

As far as the cat is concerned, they go to sleep and wake up again. They might notice the surgical incision but that quickly heals in a few days to a few weeks. After that, the only thing a male cat might notice is that they have a little bit less wind resistance, "down there."

It sounds, to me, like you are in the company of some people with very provincial attitudes who are giving you a hard time about getting your cat neutered. Excuse me for being blunt but they are idiots! You are right! THEY are wrong! The idea that pets should always be intact for their whole lives is wrong-headed!

Neutered cats live longer. They get fewer diseases. They pay more attention to their humans because they aren't always out looking for a "girlfriend." They don't pee and poop inside the house as much. They don't get in fights. Neutered cats are happier, healthier and more loving. The idea that neutering a cat makes it get fat is complete and utter bullshit!

Our cat, Casper, (the white one) is thirteen years old and he's as skinny as a rail. As a matter of fact, he's a little bit too skinny and we're actually trying to fatten him up! The other one, Elliot, (the tiger cat) is two, going on three. He was neutered a little more than a year and a half ago and he weighs fifteen pounds. He weighed fourteen when we got him. He's a little bit heavier than he should be but he is fat by no means. The reason why he's heavy is because he was abandoned, outdoors, and he doesn't get as much physical activity as he used to but we are watching his diet to help slim him down.

Think about it: We have two cats. One is too skinny and one is heavy. If neutering caused cats to get fat, we'd have two fat cats. We don't.

When a cat is left intact, testosterone, produced by the testes, flows through their body and drives the reproductive instinct much the same way stepping on the accelerator in your car makes it go faster. Testosterone makes cats seek out mates almost as if they are robots. They don't even realize what they are doing. Testosterone makes cats want to "do it" without thinking. An intact cat is basically a robot, powered by its own sex hormones. Neutering a cat takes all that away.

You might have seen a "look" on your cat's face when you took him to the vet but he did NOT understand that he was being taken to be neutered. Cats are naturally afraid of being put into a box and being taken to "parts elsewhere" for reasons unknown. It's NORMAL for a cat to be afraid of being taken to the vet just as a two-year old child would be afraid of being taken to the doctor.

Cats don't have human emotions. They might have their own "animal" emotions but they are not like human feelings. Scientists can't even be sure that animals have any emotions at all. We don't know what kind of emotions animals feel, if any, and it's not likely that we will ever know the truth. If you saw anything like a look of sadness on your cat's face it was, most likely, your imagination inspired by the wrong-headed things that other people were trying to tell you. Your sense of guilt comes from other people, not from your cat!

I'm sorry if my words seem sharp. I'm not directing them toward you as much as other people that I believe are telling you things which aren't true.

You did the right thing by having your cat neutered.

Anybody who says different can go fly a kite!

 

[solomonar]

Caspers Human Thank you for your message!
It brings comfort.

I am a scientist, this opinion is not grounded in science. Furthermore, I can feel cat's emotions. Perhaps is just my imagination.

 

[Caspers Human]

No, it's not, necessarily, imagination. They are YOUR emotions that you ascribe to your cat. You care for your cat and you have empathy for your cat. You want your cat to be healthy and happy. That's a GOOD thing!

Here's a question: How do you KNOW that your cat is happy, sad or afraid of a particular thing? You might think that the cat is afraid because of one thing but it could be another. What if the cat saw or smelled a dog? Many cats are afraid of dogs. It's a natural response for a cat to be afraid but, if you didn't see the dog, you might think that the cat is afraid of you.

Most of a cat's behaviors toward humans are learned. Cats don't, normally, make a "meow" sound. The only times cats normally meow is as kittens to call for their mother. Once grown, most cats don't meow unless they are upset. The only times cats meow for humans is when they want something. The cat has learned that making a certain sound or doing some other behavior makes the human do something they want. For example, if a cat is hungry and wants its human to feed it, the cat will learn to meow for its food. Cats will lay on their humans' laps and purr because it helps them keep warm.

Generally speaking, cats don't like being petted all over their bodies. Have you ever seen a cat wrinkle its skin when you pet it? That means you are overstimulating the cat. If you keep doing it, the cat might lash out. Cats learn to like being petted because they get better care and grooming from their humans and it keeps them warm. A cat's body temperature averages 102ºF or 39ºC where a human's body temperature averages 98.6ºF or 37ºC. That means cats feel cold sooner than humans. A cat that has acclimated to humans will naturally seek out attention from humans because it means they can get warm and have comfort.

Humans might say that their cat loves them or is happy, sad or afraid but those are human emotions which we place upon the cat. We don't even know whether cats even have emotions. I certainly believe that cats DO have emotions but I believe that they are "animal emotions" that are different from humans. Most likely, no human will ever be able to decode animal emotions and translate them into human concepts. The only thing we can do is guess.

I choose to believe that my cats do love me. I do my best to do the things that I think will make them happiest and to take care of them the best way I can but it would be the same thing as believing that my Teddy Bear loves me. It's an emotion that I give to an inanimate object because it makes me happy. It might sound selfish but the real reason I have a cat is to make MYSELF happy.

I think it's okay to act as if our cats have emotions like humans. It's one of the ways we navigate this harsh world. We naturally seek out comfort and happiness. If having a cat and thinking like our cats "love" us the same way we love them helps us get through our days, that's perfectly all right. But, in reality, it's just a game we play. It's a very nice game but, a game it is.

I love my cats and I believe that they love me back but I am not about to let a little emotional game get in the way of me taking care of my cats as well as I know how. There are times when I have to put games aside and get down to the business of keeping my cat healthy.

Neutering our cats is the right thing to do. It makes them healthier, happier and they live longer. It keeps down the population of unwanted kittens. It's smart and it's the ethical thing to do.

As we say in my country, "Ya' done good!"

 

[Margot Lane]

Think of all the accidental litters of kittens that now will not be and feel proud. There are SO many homeless kitties out there! So, thank you for doing this.

 

[neely]

TCS has an excellent article that you may want your friends to read regarding why you should spay or neuter your cat:
Why You Should Spay And Neuter Your Cats - A Complete Guide - TheCatSite
Please remember that because you love him you did the absolute best thing for him.

 

[silent meowlook]

You would feel allot worse if he:

1: He was gone from home up to a month at a time
2: He was fighting with all the neighbors cats and getting injured
3: He contracts a fatal virus
4: When he starts spraying all over your house due to his frustration with not being able to breed.
5: You start seeing kittens that look like him dead from being hit by a car because there are way more cats than there are homes for them.
6: When a neighbor shoots him for being loud all hours of the night fighting and flirting with other cats.
The list of reasons is endless.

 

[catloverfromwayback]

Agree with everyone who's already posted, and I notice it's mostly disapproval/discomfort at castrating males in these situations. I suspect a lot (all?) of that is human projection. You've done your boy nothing but good, spared pain and distress to other cats, and helped curb the vast numbers of unwanted kittens. If he'd fathered kittens, the females would be having their own kittens in a few months. That's not something you, or any other responsible person, would want.

 

[Kflowers]

Animals have the same emotions – fear, joy, love, despair –as humans. To say that only humans experience such emotions is arrogance used to excuse ‘owning’ and ‘dominating’ all other beings and things in the world. This simplifies human existence. If animals have no emotions what you do to them doesn’t matter – experiment on them, kill them, whatever, if they feel nothing so what? There is one difference, as far as I know the only animals that go to war in the same way people do, are chimpanzees, ants and wasps.

None the less, it is a good thing to neuter and spay your pets for their sake. It doesn’t stop the emotions, or the ability to mate, but it stops the mad desire to mate over all other emotions. As others have said, having kittens not only leaves kittens without resources in a world where people don’t share much, but can be, and often is, fatal to the cat having the kittens. When the male cat remains with his family to protect the kittens, and they often do given the chance, he will run many of the same risks of being killed as they mother cat in the hunt for food. Keeping your male from his family will cause him to grieve. Giving the kittens away will cause the mother to grieve. (Personal experience – our cat had kittens, we gave one away and the mother who had been an affectionate lap cat before that never sat in anyone’s lap again. She wasn’t mean, she took care of the other kittens their entire lives, but she never really cuddled again. Antidotal, yes, but there you are.)

To answer your particular question, we have always gotten our cats and dogs neutered and spayed, except for one cat, who was feral. All our male cats were neutered at the time we rescued the feral. Given that and her fear of being touched, we didn’t have her spayed. One of the boy cats became very fond of her and when she went into heat, they had sex. Yes, he could get it up and they did, every time she went into heat. Of course, there were no kittens. One of the other boys was interested in her and attempted to mount her. He grabbed her neck; she flipped under him and gashed his stomach. He recovered, but left her alone after that.

Oddly enough when she went into heat no other boy cats (strangers who did not live with us) came to court her. I supposed this was because we already had three boys living with us. Other times we had cats come into heat males came in large numbers to surround the house and call to the girl.

Leaving her unspayed was dangerous and in a couple of years she did develop pyometra. The vet gave her a 2% chance of surviving, which she did. He waited for her and sat with her as she recovered. They continued their monogamous relationship for the rest of their lives. When he died (kidney failure) she died a week later.

The sum of this is if you boy falls totally in love, he will be happy with his companion. He will not miss sex if she never goes into heat because he’ll be waiting for the opportunity, but being with her means as much as sex does to him. If she goes into heat, he’ll be able to have sex with her. Neutering does not remove what he needs for sex, just what makes the hormones and kittens.

Chimpanzees, Warfare, and the Invention of Peace | War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views | Oxford Academic

Animal feelings and the hard facts that we don't admit

 

[solomonar]

Whether cats experience emotions, that is a big question.
Judging from varying tone, pitch and intensity of mews and from body language, they can interpret the surrounding word in an emotional key.
From the original question of feeling guilty to neuter my tomcat, now the question on the table is the scientific base of emotional connection between humans and cats. That is: experiment, observation, and reproducibility.

Is emotional connection scientifically proven in that way? Well, according to my (limited) knowledge - it is not.
Furthermore, not even love between humans is proven, beyond some hormonal changes.
From Aristotle to present day, love is beyond science. Or it is not?

However, there are so many cats lovers that the usual explanations fail.
To love a cat is perhaps a religious thing? Or - the opposite - an expression of human insanity?
The more I search, the more I get puzzled.

 

[Caspers Human]

... I notice it's mostly disapproval/discomfort at castrating males in these situations. ...

That's kind of weird, isn't it?! You can have your female cat sterilized and nobody would bat an eye but, if you castrate a male, all the crackpots in the world come out of the woodwork to chastise you! Irrational behavior at its finest!

I never said that cats or other animals don't have emotions. I'm sure that they do.
It's just that I don't think that animal emotions are the same as human emotions and I don't believe that there is any way to find the truth.

We can talk to people and ask them questions about how they feel but animals can't talk so it's impossible to know what animals really feel or whether they "feel" anything at all. It's one of the "Great Unknowns" of life.

I also said that I choose to believe that cats CAN feel emotions, even if they aren't the same as humans'. Maybe there's truth to it. Maybe it's just projection on my part but I don't care. I like taking care of my cats and it makes me feel good when they act like they are happy and love me.

It it a psychological game that we play with our pets? I don't know and I don't care. I love my cats, just the same!

 

[catloverfromwayback]

That's kind of weird, isn't it?! You can have your female cat sterilized and nobody would bat an eye but, if you castrate a male, all the crackpots in the world come out of the woodwork to chastise you! Irrational behavior at its finest!

Yes, you can practically see some human males crossing their legs and wincing at the thought.

 

[Caspers Human]

But...but...but... It's a CAT! Oy-VEY!

Nobody's talking about touching THEIR junk!

 

[MeowMamma]

You would feel allot worse if he:

1: He was gone from home up to a month at a time
2: He was fighting with all the neighbors cats and getting injured
3: He contracts a fatal virus
4: When he starts spraying all over your house due to his frustration with not being able to breed.
5: You start seeing kittens that look like him dead from being hit by a car because there are way more cats than there are homes for them.
6: When a neighbor shoots him for being loud all hours of the night fighting and flirting with other cats.
The list of reasons is endless.

Also when they are not fixed, they fight other males ...I had to loose two of my beloved boys mannnnny years ago due to contracting feline aids from various fights with male cats who carried it.
So you are protecting him from disease as well

 

[MeowMamma]

Don't beat yourself up. I think it's normal to feel badly. You are a good pet parents. You are protecting him and you in the long run. He won't get into fights,thereby getting injured or killed .I had one that lost a eye in a fight....left home for a week..came back in bad shape. The vet did surgery...and found he had contracted feline aids...I had to have him put asleep ..to protect my others....WORST grief and guilt was from not knowing Abt the benefits of spaying and neutering . Almost 20 years later I have 4 boys. All peaceful with each other..no spraying,no fights, healthy...and my oldest is 16...this prolongs their life I'm told. So you feel the emotions and let it go. You did well for him and you. God bless