02/04/2022
In celebration of Spay Month, Spay FIRST! spoke with Dr Phil Bushby, DVM, M.S., DACVS, Marcia Lane Endowed Chair of Humane Ethics and Animal Welfare at Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine, where he served on faculty for 42 years. Phil Bushby is a founding father of the shelter medicine movement, the high volume/high quality spay/neuter movement and is a leading voice for homeless animals.
“Bushby,” as he tells people to call him, is a spokesperson for Fix By Five www.fixbyfive.org , an organization dedicated to urging veterinarians to recommend spaying of cats at five months instead of six. Bushby wants veterinarians to abandon the outdated six month timeline because many cats cycle at or before five months of age. Advising people to wait until six months pushes cats to the precipice of an unwanted litter, and many plummet over the edge. Fix By Five was founded by Esther Mechler of United Spay Alliance and Marians Dream.
Spay FIRST! asked Bushby to explain why his message goes out to veterinarians first and foremost. He said, “The most important reason is population control. Male and female cats can be reproductively active by five months, and litters are born that people don’t want. You can see cage after cage of homeless kittens in shelters. The most important reason for veterinarians to change their advice to clients is to stop overpopulation of cats.”
Bushby continued, “Another reason is the health of the individual animal. Spaying by five months prevents mammary neoplasia in females and in male cats, castration by five months prevents fighting and spraying that result in cats being relinquished to shelters.” He added that while some veterinarians believe that early neutering predisposes cats to urinary tract issues later on, there is no data to support that claim. He cited studies that compare urethral diameter at seven weeks and seven months in cats that remained intact vs. ones that were castrated in pediatric surgeries. Bushby said, “There is no correlation between the age of castration and later urinary blockage. For population control and the health of the individual cat, there is no reason not to neuter by five months.”
Bushby said if a new disease was discovered that killed one to two million cats in peoples’ homes each year, research would be undertaken to stop it and veterinarians would take every possible step to address it. Homelessness kills one to two million cats in the US each year, but they don’t die in peoples’ homes or in peoples’ arms, they die alone in shelters or on the streets, so the urgency is not there.
Bushby said the outcome of unwanted litters is a preventable tragedy. He said, “The tragedy is going into the back room of a shelter and there are black trash bags full of dead kittens. There’s a growing ‘no-kill’ movement, but when you have more cats than there are homes for them, the outcome is that they are killed, warehoused or left on the streets to starve, or be hit by cars. We know what the problem is and we know what the solution is…the tragedy is that we ignore the solution. This is 100 percent preventable and we know it.”
Bushby’s goal is to get the information into the hands of veterinarians, “So we can make the change.”
