Thank you for being my responsible adult spiritual son. Missing Apollo will get better.. not today nor tomorrow but it will get easier to bear.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Be cautious!

which will surprise Kim

Actually, it won’t.

Frankly though, not being an animal person I wouldn’t be able to put the time and effort into preventing an animal for breeding. But I just think that for all intents and purposes making a dog unable to use his voice is a little harsher, since he wouldn’t miss his need to…well you know, but trying to bark would be another issue.

An overabundance of puppies or kittens is just a much larger inconvenience, so many people are willing to make the spay/neutering decision. Again, I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it is just farther along the “inconvenience” scale than the vocal cord thing. We all draw lines in different places.

If an ‘”over burdening of the system” automatically creates justification, then I believe Jonathan Swift might have “A Modest Proposal” for you.

Repeating myself, I don’t disagree with or condemn spaying or neutering. But we should at least have the guts to say that we do it to make our lives easier and be able to live with that.

And by the way, preventing a pet from breeding is a simple matter. It takes a diligence that many are unwilling to assume, but it isn’t complicated.

ALL of that aside – I’m really sorry that it came to this for your family. As a young child I can honestly remember being much more upset about losing a dog (who I saw and loved every day) than losing a grandparent who I saw infrequently. It’s easy for adults to minimize a child’s feelings in this area, and it’s obvious that you are taking this seriously with your children. My heart goes out to all of you.

One article on the subject.

It’s estimated that just one unspayed female cat
and her offspring can produce an estimated 420,000 cats in only seven years. So…room for all of those? Or do you know people who would be able to take all those cats?

And with dogs, an unneutered male dog can be responsible for dozens of offspring in a single year.

We don’t live in the wild, and when we domesticate animals we have a responsibility to care for them. In the wild it’s survival of the fittest, but not in human civilisation. So if you are against neutering a dog or a cat, don’t get one. It’s nicer for them, and less of a strain on the system. Kittens and puppies are cute, but they grow quickly and produce more kittens and puppies. Many. Humans don’t normally have litters, but animals almost always do.

Are you willing to look after all the puppies and kittens being born? We live in the city, we don’t live on a farm. It isn’t “physical altering of an animal to make it convenient to live with humans” it’s preventing the future deaths of untold amounts of baby animals. If you live in a large community or a city you need to take this into consideration.

Research on this issue shows why spaying and neutering is important. Unless of course you have a fool proof way of keeping a cat or a dog from mating. Good luck with that one.