It’s okay for kitties to be friends, but only if precautions have been taken!

It’s February, that time of year when love is in the air. That’s why February is nationally recognized as Spay/Neuter Awareness Month, as a means to educate and encourage people to have their pets sterilized before the spring and summer months when there is a rampant overproduction of puppies and kittens and when most animal shelters experience an unmanageable increase in animal intake. Today is also World Spay Day and honestly, the best gift of love you can give your pet is to have them spayed or neutered. In our case, since we’re cat educators, here are some basic facts as to how and why spay/neuter equates to love:

1. It improves your cat’s health and quality of life. The overall health and emotional benefits to your cat from spay/neuter will result in them having a longer and happier life. Spaying your female prior to her first heat nearly eliminates the risk of mammary cancer, uterine infections, and uterine cancer, which is fatal to approximately 90% of cats according to the ASPCA. Neutering your male before he is 6 months of age prevents testicular and prostate cancer and greatly reduces his risk for perianal tumors.
2. It lowers a cat’s dangerous desire to roam. Even with the best intentions to keep your cat indoors, escapes can happen. If your female is not spayed and she comes across an unaltered male, she might accidentally become impregnated. Even worse, in looking for a mate, your cat could become lost, injured, or even fatally hit by a car.
3.  Behavioral Benefits. Spaying stops a female’s heat cycle and the annoying vocalization and inappropriate urination that can often come with it. Until she is spayed, this cycle will repeat and continue for weeks at a time until she finds a mate. Neutering a male reduces aggressive behavior and his need to mark the house or outdoors with strong-smelling urine. Spay/neuter will virtually eliminate these behavioral issues whether for an indoor pet cat, or outdoor colonies.

There are numerous other reasons to encourage and promote spay/neuter. If you’d like to read further articles, please consider the following:

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – The Facts of Life: The 101’s of Kittens and Conception

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – The Overall Health, Behavioral, and Emotional Benefits for Cats and Society at Large

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – Debunking the Misconceptions, Excuses, and Reasons Why People Don’t Spay or Neuter Their Cat

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – Cat Overpopulation and the Moral Ethics of Time

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – Making Sense of Cat Overpopulation When the Numbers Don’t Add Up

I realize it’s been forever since I posted and I wanted to let you know all is well, just many personal and work-related commitments that have been keeping me busy and off the radar. Now that the world is starting to normalize a bit more, I wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a wonderful summer before time escaped me and to share some tips to keep our cats safe, happy, and healthy during this time of year, as they can be adversely affected by the upcoming 4th of July, the searing summer temperatures, and the influx of gatherings that will be occurring in the months to come as we begin to invite more family and friends back into our homes. Read more

Photo credit: Sam Lion from Pexels

Rescue animals were TIME magazine’s 2020 Pet of the Year and with the new normal associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s really not a surprise. With stay-at-home orders issued across the U.S. in March 2020 and continuing nearly a year later for much of the population, people and families are hungry for the love and companionship a pet can bring. According to a survey published in January 2021 from Porch.com, Americans adopted 750,000 animals from shelters since the pandemic began, a 3% higher rate than the previous year, with 55% of the adoptions, cats. Read more

It’s the story of any multi-cat household and it’s usually not intentional. It starts with that cute cat that was given to you as a gift, because, well, it needs a home and who else better than you to give it one? And then that rescue you had to help with, resulting in you taking the cat home because goodness knows what would have happened to him had you not stepped in. And of course, that foster stint that was supposed to be temporary but was a resounding failure, represented by the cat contentedly taking residence on your bed, along with that cat that showed up out of nowhere on your doorstep that you were going to feed “just that one time,” that you have now been feeding for over two years…and just like that, you’re officially a multi-cat household. Read more

It’s often said when one rescues a pet that it’s the pet that rescues the person. There’s a reason for it – because it’s true. At least it’s true for me and the story I share in the anthology, Rescued Volume 2: The Healing Stories of 12 Cats, Through Their Eyes. Or more accurately, the story I share as written in the perspective of my angel cat, Mr. Jazz, and how he brought our sweet rescue Jazmine to my fiancé, Dan, and I from the afterlife. Read more