OPINION: Desexing holds key to reducing our cat problems

I AM a lover of felines but I am also mindful of the reality that every year worldwide, millions are sent to their deaths.

I AM a lover of felines but I am also mindful of the reality that every year worldwide, millions are sent to their deaths.

They die as they are deemed unadoptable due to illnesses such as FIV/cat flu, or a correctable behavioural problem.

The prevailing problem is the continual lack of desexing. Cats can start breeding from the age of four months. For those that are fortunate enough to be spared, many suffer as they are dumped, abandoned or relinquished.

Rehabilitating a cat can be time consuming, with considerable amounts of patience and love.

Research shows that domesticated animals suffer more psychologically than their wild counterparts when their expectations aren't met in their interactions with humans.

Dame Jane Goodall states that "trust and expectations of certain types of behaviour on the part of animals are brought forth by the ways in which humans have interacted with them, in the past and not, of course, by a signed formal contract".

Cats need to be desexed, in an effort to reduce this high euthanasia rate. Their lives and their emotions depend on it.