T is like depriving her of her rights as a dog," said the pet owner who gave his surname as Shen. He was playing with his one-year-old husky named Yoyo at the Pet Carnival held last week in the Shanghai International Exhibition Centre.

He didn't want Yoyo to breed, but was equally against spaying her.

Few dogs are neutered in China. Dog owners believe it is a cruel thing to do. Also, they are worried about the risks of such surgery.

Many pet owners share Shen's attitude. However, they also feel it would be too much trouble to take care of their pets through pregnancy and birth or they believe frequent pregnancy would harm the health of their pets, especially cats. Besides, a dog licence costs 2,000 yuan (US$242) every year in downtown Shanghai, which makes many people unwilling to keep more than one dog.

"She is OK. Why can't we just let her be?" said a local woman who keeps a five-year-old Pomeranian, who has never had a mate. "She is nice and healthy alone," the owner said. She said she wouldn't consider having her spayed.

Men tend to be more against having their pets neutered, said a local woman volunteer in the Small Animal Protection Association (SAPA), who preferred to be identified by her Internet name, Kazen. They feel that castrating a dog deprives him of a major pleasure in life.

Her colleague "Apple Young" (also an Internet name) keeps two Pekinese. Although she thought of having them neutered, her husband didn't agree. "We view them as our children, and my husband wants them to live happily." She decided to give him more time to accept the idea.

Shifting into neutral

"Maybe he takes the cat as an alter ego," an expatriate woman said about a local man's reluctance to have his cat castrated.

But when he finally decided to have the pet neutered, his friends said he was cruel, questioning his care of the cat.

"I only made up my mind to do it when the vet advised us to," he said. "The vet said it would considerably lower the possibility of a re-occurrence of his previous illness."

"We are against uncontrolled birth of pets," said Kazen, "because that will cause more stray animals." SAPA and some animal protection websites all strongly advocate birth control for pets.

Cats reproduce very quickly, according to veterinarian Wu Qingrong of the Animal Clinic associated to Shanghai Zoo. A couple of cats can become 100 within two years.

Female cats can howl overnight when in heat while male cats urinate around the home to mark their domain. "Many cat owners can't put up with these things and decide to neuter them," Wu said.

Kazen viewed the issue from the viewpoint of protecting the cats. "Many female cats have womb purulence," she said. Spaying them would totally eliminate the occurrence of such illnesses within the reproductive system, as the womb will be removed together with the ovaries.

Besides, it is a responsible way to handle the issue for pet owners, she said. Cats tend to go out mating and many went missing for this reason, adding to the number of stray cats in cities. Some return and give birth safely but soon they are forced to separate from their kittens, that is, if the owner can successfully find someone to adopt each kitten.

"I neuter several cats every day," Wu said. Sometimes he does the operations in the pet owner's home. "I do no more than 10 dogs every year." He estimated that the ratio would be about the same in other pet clinics.

Dogs have two oestrus periods annually and don't cause as much trouble as cats. Male dogs sometimes show bad behaviour in this period but female dogs usually don't have obvious symptoms. "A specially designed sanitary panty for female dogs can avoid their mating," Wu said, "so there won't be unwanted pregnancy."

Also, surgery for dogs is far more complicated than for cats, which makes the cost higher. Wu charges around 100 yuan (US$12.10) to neuter a cat but for a dog, the cost will be at least four times higher.

There is little risk for cats in the operation, Wu observed. The only possible danger lies in some animals' allergy to anaesthetic, which happens in one in a thousand cases.

Wu quoted statistics from abroad that the ratio of dogs attacking people can be reduced by a factor of 40 by castrating them. "People have their pets neutered if they don't want them to propagate in Western countries," Wu said.

Stray pets

But in China, the pet industry only started to prosper in the early 1990s. "Many problems haven't drawn people's attention yet. For example, when you suggest they give cats a vaccination against rabies, they think you are cheating them."

SAPA and several other animal protection organizations have been picking up stray pets, mostly cats. "There are also police catching dogs and having stray dogs slaughtered," Wu said.

People with SAPA have all the cats they rescue neutered. Sometimes they ask vets to abort foetuses. "Vets from Taiwan refuse to carry out such operations. According to their religion, such operations are killing unborn lives," Kazen said.

The present number of stray pets is already beyond SAPA's capacity. It is difficult to find qualified adopters for them and if the animal strays again, all their previous work has been in vain.