My cat is an un-neutered male, around 1 year and 2 to 3 months old. I live in a country where it is not the norm to neuter cats and they're usually allowed to roam free. My cat has been allowed outdoors during the day and brought inside around 6 pm since I found him as a kitten. He had since adjusted to the routine and been fine with it, other than one time he escaped during the night, and another time he didn't come home till it was dark.
In the past month, he has had two injuries that ended up infected, just two weeks apart. I've had to keep him inside to apply medication and allow healing, which had made him very restless to go outside, displaying howling and litter box issues.
The first day he was let outside again after the second injury, he disappeared in the evening and didn't come home till 3 am, during which time he seemed to have hunted down a rat, which he didnt eat. So from the next day onward, I brought him inside an hour earlier, not giving him the chance to disappear. But now he seems very restless and needs to go outside at night too, which is not a problem he had a week ago. He screams all the way into the early morning and also pees outside his litter box, even when it's clean. There is also a stench even when I don't find any wet spots, so he could also be spraying.
I wanted to know if neutering at this age could potentially reduce his need to go outside, especially since he might want to go out for hunting and not finding a mate. He would need to be kept inside again for a few days after the procedure, and I worry that it might make the problem worse.
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