Will Miss #3: difference in spaying procedure

I've never had cats in the USA, and I've only seen one cat get spayed (our friend's, we ended up taking her to the vet and bringing her back while he was deployed) so I didn't even realize there was a difference until my own cats got spayed. I wouldn't have even known there was a difference, had I also taken my cats to the base vet, but instead I took them to the off base UK clinic.

Apparently, the US way of spaying that I'm familiar with (and which the vet on base does) is to make a cut right at the bottom of their tummy but my cats got their cut on the side. You can see in the photos that a good chunk of their fur got shaven off and it took few month to grow back, but I actually prefer it that way. I remember when we took our friend's cat to the vet to get spayed, I kept thinking about her using her litter box and possibly getting all kinds of infections in her cut because of where it was located. It seemed like she would be literally touching the litter with her cut while peeing. While I don't know if that is necessary true, having the cut on the side just completely eliminates the problem altogether.

Again, I'm no vet expert and don't know if it actually makes any difference, but having their cut on the side made me feel much better about keeping the cut clean from the litter box.