It is sometimes difficult to detect that a female dog or cat has already been sterilized if it has not been tattooed. And sterilized but untattooed male cats may be mistaken for females when they come to a sterilization campaign. More than once a female dog or cat has been brought to a campaign for sterilization, anesthetized, and discovered to have already been sterilized only after a surgeon has made an incision. By tattooing the sterilized animals, we avoid subjecting them to unnecessary trauma and their adopters to unnecessary inconvenience and expense.
sterilized at one of our campaigns
The tattoos our surgeons make are small. Once the fur grows back, a tattoo is hard to detect without careful examination of the surgical area.