Colleagues working in the field have recently alerted us to three errors within the original text of our manuscript. The first two are referencing errors in the second paragraph of the Introduction, whilst the third is an error in a sentence from the first paragraph of the discussion, and we should like to clarify these as follows:

1. There is a referencing error in sentence 10 of the original manuscript, which currently reads:

"Early-age neutering performed before puberty (5–9 month’s age) can effectively prevent unwanted litters in cats, thereby helping to control both stray and pet cat populations [20]."

This statement should have cited reference 19 (Mazeau et al 2021) rather than reference 20. Also, given that we defined prepubertal neutering as neutering taking place before puberty, the description “early-age” was superfluous and inconsistent with our used of “early” and “late” elsewhere in the manuscript (where these terms are used in the context of the study results and neuter groups we used). Therefore, sentence 10 of the second introduction paragraph should instead read:

“Neutering performed before puberty (5–9 month’s age) can effectively prevent unwanted litters in cats, thereby helping to control both stray and pet cat populations [19]."

2. There is a second referencing error in sentence 11 or the second introduction paragraph.

The sentence in the original publication reads:

"In ome previous study, pre-pubertal neutering was not identified as a risk factor for overweight or obesity, compared with obesity at a traditional age (7 months) [20–22]."

As well as the typographical error at the start of the sentence, the definition of ’traditional neutering’ was not accurately stated for all three studies referenced. Therefore, the sentence should instead read:

"In some previous studies, pre-pubertal neutering was not identified as a risk factor for overweight or obesity, compared with obesity at a traditional age, defined as > 5.5 months [20] or 7 months [21,22]."

Further, we have inadvertently used the wrong reference for citation 20 (Spain et al. 2004). The reference included in the reference list was for their study on early-age gonadectomy in dogs, whereas we should instead have included its partner study in cats, which was published alongside the dog study in the same journal issue:

Spain CV, Scarlett JM, Houpt KA. Long-term risks and benefits of early-age gonadectomy in cats. J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2004;224:372–379. doi: 10.2460/javma.2004.224.372

3. The final identified error is in the third sentence of the first paragraph of the discussion.

In the original publication, this sentence reads:

"Neutering was associated with an upwards deviation in growth, which ranged from 0.14 of a centile unit in late-neutered male kittens to 1.4 centile units in early-neutered female kittens."

However, the terms “late-neutered” and “early-neutered” do not correctly identify the neuter groups with the smallest and largest centile-unti deviations. Further, it would have been better to quote the second figure to two decimal places (1.39) rather than one (1.4) so that this was consistent with what was reported in the results. Overall, therefore, the sentence should instead read:

"Neutering was associated with an upwards deviation in growth, which ranged from 0.14 of a centile unit in male neuter group 4 (> 28 weeks) to 1.39 centile units in female neuter group 3 (25-29 weeks).”