The kitten problem in warrior cats by Mistystream

Mistystream highlights a problem in the Warrior Cats universe.

Art by Shadow-Ku

Kitten Problem in Warrior cats, and real life.
Also, if you don’t understand how reproduction works, this article might be a bit confusing. It does not have anything mature or inappropriate in it though!
Many animals of all kinds are overpopulated. This is due to accidental breeding, or purposeful breeding.
First: Accidental.
This often happens when owners with intact animals(dogs, tomcats, stallions etc.) find a female in heat. Of course, unless they are being supervised, or a well enough trained to leave her alone, will try to have babies with her. This also happens on the street as well, when intact animals have babies together.
Purposeful breeding.
So of course not all purposeful breeding is bad. But in order to be a good breeder, you have to pay attention to everything about the animals you are breeding. They need good temperaments, health, and the two dogs genes must mix well together to produce healthy animals. Many people just want cute babies, but get overwhelmed. They might abandon them, try to sale them, or hand them to already overpopulated shelters. Shelters already have too many animals to keep, so they have to choose which ones get put to sleep.

So how does this relate to Warriors?
All wild and domestic cats in warriors are intact. Yes Firestar and Smudge were too young to be neutered. But since they were not fixed, they should not have been let out to roam freely. Also it shows princess, roaming around while she is pregnant. This is incredibly irresponsible, because she cannot escape danger as well. She cannot fight as well or climb and run as fast. She could have contractions, cramps, etc while she out in the forest, leaving her vulnerable.
In warrior cats, the wild cat population has sky rocketed from the first books. Humans have done nothing to control it. The cats often demonize the vet and being fixed. This is setting a bad example to children, who think that cats don’t like to get neutered.
I’ve seen the argument that cats don’t like the vet because they want to have babies. That not true. They don’t like the vet because the poked and touched and get annoyed. Whenever the testicles/uterus is removed, they lose the want to mate completely. They don’t care, or even think about having babies.

Now, this is a bit different in dogs.
Here’s why:
If you have a domestic dog, especially male, that is intact, you have to be careful. They need to always be monitored around female dogs no matter how well the training goes. Unfixed males have the tendency to escape your house, if they smell a female in heat. The will break into your neighbors yard if there is a female in heat. But training can counter this, at least mostly. If you train your dog not to hump females, it will generally work. So as long as you don’t let your intact male around intact females unsupervised, you should be fine.
Now for the females, they will flirt with the males if they are intact, and will often encourage them to mount her. A unfixed female dog will also bleed or become grumpy, aggressive, distracted while in heat. They might even mount and flirt with other females or fixed male dogs.
Another thing is that intact dogs, especially males, will still try to mount fixed dogs. Male dogs might still harass fixed females. This happened with my dog. She is spayed, but whenever my cousins brought their intact male over, he kept mounting her. Even though he best friend, an fixed male gsd, tackled him off her a few times, he kept persisting. My dog finally got so mad at him that she attacked him. Thankfully they were both fine.

Back to cats. Intact toms should always be monitered around intact females. But if you let an intact cat roam around, they are more likely to encounter another intact cat. They are also harder to train than dogs, so training your intact cat will be harder than intact dogs. There are the same problems with cat and dogs. Females will bleed, become more moody etc. Intact toms will often mark their territory, sometimes even your house.

So conclusion: Warrior cats should stop demonizing the vet, cut down the wild population by human intervention, or maybe more cats leaving to become kittypets. This is a real problem, and large groups of wildcats will chase out native wildlife. They might hunt to much prey, causing native wildlife to starve.
Owning an intact animal is not bad, but it takes much more effort to keep them from breeding, escaping etc. It takes a dedicated owner to own an intact animal.

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