There are plenty of benefits that come from spaying or neutering your cat. Cats who are spayed and neutered are less likely to fight, stray, and can't get pregnant or impregnate other cats. However, there's one more added benefit to this process: spaying and neutering can help to protect cats of both genders from cancer. Read on to learn how this works and why you should spay and neuter your cats:

What Spaying and Neutering Physically Does

Spaying and neutering both aim to make a cat infertile, but they're performed in different ways depending on the cat's gender.

Male cats are neutered. In neuter surgeries, a cat's testicles are removed, preventing them from being able to produce sperm to impregnate female cats. This is a fairly simple procedure that doesn't require much time to heal from.

Female cats, on the other hand, essentially receive a hysterectomy when they're spayed. Since female reproductive organs are inside the body, the surgery is a bit more invasive but still safe. However, a female cat may need a couple of days to recover from the procedure afterward.

Testicular Cancer

For male cats, neutering completely removes the possibility of developing testicular cancer. This is because the tissue that is susceptible to developing this form of cancer is no longer in the body.

Testicles are responsible for producing testosterone, and it is believed that high levels of testosterone are what lead to this variety of cancer. While a male cat could still develop other forms of cancer in its lifetime, simply neutering it can guarantee safety from one form.

Mammary Cancer

Like male cats, female cats cannot develop cancers of the reproductive organs once they're removed. However, as an added bonus, female cats have a much lower rate of developing mammary cancer after being spayed. Like male cats, this is because there are fewer hormonal chemicals being produced by the body, which decreases the cat's rate of developing cancers of parts of the body that are responsive to hormones. In female cats, this directly relates to their ability to nurse their babies; the mammary glands.

Having your cat spayed or neutered can save you a lot of grief and money, but it can also protect your cat from deadly diseases. Unless you intend to breed your cat professionally, it's a good idea to have your kitty spayed or neutered. Even if you have a breeding cat, it's never too late to have them fixed once their breeding years are over.