You are tormenting your cat: either get her fixed or let her mate.  Of
course letting her mate is a really bad idea.  Both you and your cat
will be happier if you have her spayed: intack females are a real pain
when they are in heat and her marking and other sex related activities
are a nusience - they there is the problem of attracting every tom in
the neighborhood, even if she is inside they will sometimes notice and
come calling (literally).

T.E.D. (tdavis@gearbox.maem.umr.edu)
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somewhere in the body or they will be automatically rejected.

Marie, just get her spayed and get it over with. It's not an "unnecessary"
procedure. It's *very* necessary, given the critical overpopulation problem
already. We're killing healthy cats by the millions. What's a more effective
argument than that?
Besides, she's gonna make you miserable. A cat in heat is hard to live with,
and miserable herself. Just do it.

Sherry

I had a cat that went into heat and stayed that way for two months until I got
her fixed. Her voice got hoarse from caterwauling, she kept us up all night
long. We had to be careful because she was trying to run out the door all the
time. She had leukemia so I couldn't find a vet to fix her initially. Finally I
did. She's much happier and healthier now. I suggest getting her fixed.

Cats are induced ovulators.  They do not ovulate until they mate, meaning
heats can go on for weeks at a time.  This is not healthy for your animal.
They can develop a life threatening condition called pyometra, and the cure
for that is an emergency spay, which if you're lucky, your cat survives.
Lucky, because of the huge amount of infection that a cat with pyometra is
dealing with, and cats that sick don't have a good chance of surviving
anesthesia.  Pyometra is caused by too many heat cycles, and you can be
assured of your cat developing it within 3 years.  Feline mating behavior is
governed by instinct and not choice.  A female cat that cannot mate is like
you when you've skipped a couple of days worth of meals and then have a
beautifully grilled steak put before you.  You can't control the salivation
that occurs, even if you're strong enough to not eat the meal. A cat that is
not spayed or neutered has instincts stronger than that of your hunger, and
it's torture to them to not be able to mate.  You may think it's funny, but
it's not.  Like I said, think of how you feel when you're as hungry as
you've ever been in your life and someone teases you by taking away food.
You'd feel even worse.

Breeding regular domestic cats is a very bad idea.  Cats are killed by the
millions in this country, and contributing even one more unnecessary animal
when there are so many without homes is immoral.  In the days before
vaccines were developed and cats lived outside, the life expectancy was less
than 2 years, and the life expectancy of the litters was that maybe 2 out of
6 would survive to their first birthday.  A lot of cats died "naturally" and
the population was kept under control by predators and disease.  With the
advent of vaccines and the longer lifespans that this created, you had more
cats survive into adulthood to procreate and their litters had a higher
survival rate as well.  Thus the necessity of spaying and neutering to keep
the pet population under control.  An unspayed female cat, her unneutered
mate and all of their offspring, producing 2 litters per years, with 2.8
surviving kittens per year can total 11,606,077 cats in only 9 years. And
what do you think happens to all of these excess cats?  Some live out their
lives on the margins of society scrounging what they can and mostly starving
until they die of disease like their wilder ancestors did.  Some die from
the deliberate human cruelty of poison or shooting.  Millions more are
euthanized in shelters because they can't find homes because there simply
aren't enough. That doesn't even address the health consequences to a female
that's been bred including sexually transmitted diseases and possilble life
threatening complications to her during pregnancy and/or delivery.  Even
those who have purebred cats and know of the genetic history of many
generations of their cat's ancestors choose to spay and neuter their cats if
they are not top of the line representatives of the breed who can be assured
(through a lot of expensive testing) of improving the breed.  You don't know
the genetic history of your cat even as far back as one generation.

There are many many good reasons to have your cat spayed and to not breed
her.  There isn't a single good reason to keep her intact or to breed her.

We don't believe either in declawing cats. But we have had our cats
sterilized after they were about 1 year old (I think) by our local
veterinarian. Both cats are females. We live in Denmark, and there is here
a very humane, very helpful and very knowledgeable organization which
helps cats, for example finding homes for the homeless. This is where we
got our two cats. And it is the recommendation of these people, as well as
the vets here in Denmark, to sterilize cats, both male and female. It is
their belief that this is not detrimental to them leading a good life, and
is a strong help in cutting down on the number of unwanted infant cats
which are abandoned or simply put to death.

Since our cats are allowed to freely roam around outside our house as they
wish (with access to our house via a cat door), we also feel much better
regarding their safety, that they are sterilized.

But we wouldn't think about declawing our cats; how else would they climb
trees or protect themselves? We have a scratch-post in one of our rooms,
and our cats use this almost exclusively, leaving our furniture completely
unscratched.

Steve, Denmark