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Funny how the post that are anti-declawing often get heated wheras the pro or neutral posts tend to remain calm and matter of fact. Just an observation.
Although I am an advocate for spaying and neutering and all my pets have had the procedure, I disagree that a spay or neuter is for the benefit of the cat and/or dog. In the wild, there would be no need to be spayed or neutered. We would not have to worry about over-population as a combination of natural selection, disease and predators would take care of overporpulation. Survival of the fittest.
No one every claimed it benefits WILD cats and dogs living in the WILD. You're comparing animals living in natural conditions where their lifespans are much shorter, to domestic pets that live indoors and for many years. How would breast cancer or pyometra benefit our UNSPAYED cats and dogs? Or testicular cancer benefit our male pets?
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Granted, when we keep a domesticated cat confined to our home where the female cannot find a male to breed with it is cruel to leave a female cat intact. It is also a big inonvenience to have the male marking his territorry in our homes. Also it reduces artificial over-population and the number to cats that would have to be destroyed. However, these are really all benefits to humans, not so much to the individual cat being spayed or neutered.
Do some research on breast cancer and pyometra and testicular cancer in "intact" animals. It is to their benefit to spay/neuter them as well as ours. Declawing prevents no disease in the cat and is of no benefit to them at all.
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Then there is the benefit of eliminating cancer of the reproductive organs and increased longevity. If this is such a benefit for cats, maybe we should consider spaying (hysterectomies) and neutering (castration) as a regular procedure for humans to ensure we do not end up with reproductive cancers? Of course this is non-sense ... but so is the statement that spay/neuter is anything but an elective surgery similar to tail docking, declawing or having dew claws remove.
Don't you watch TV or read the papers? There are indeed women who chose to have a hysterectomy and breast removal to prevent cancer. Drastic to be sure, but when they've lost mothers and sisters and Aunts to cancer... they do it. And don't compare cats to humans. They're totally different "animals."
Many do. I can't even begin to say how many posts I have seen over the years "my kitten won't play, he keeps crying and won't walk, it's been two weeks since I had him declawed, why won't he play?" and variations on that.
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I looked for my old post about my Siamese in the 1960s and what happened with her after she was declawed as a "package deal" when she was spayed. I can't find it and don't want to spend another 30 minutes typing it all again. I took a happy playful and loving 4 to 5 month old kitten in for the "package deal" and picked up a totally different, depressed and miserable cat a few days later. She never played again.... she kept to herself in the upstairs bedrooms where she lived from then until I gave her away. If I had only known it was so much more than a serious claw clipping.
Before deciding to have our cat declawed I did extensive research and we had a lengthy conversation with our vet.
And your vet (fox guarding the hen-house) convinced you, despite all the evidence out there how harmful it is, that it would, in some way, benefit your cat.
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While it is a very significant surgery to cats, you cannot realistically compare a declaw procedure to having the last digit of every finger amputated. While in the most hypothetical sense this may be the case, human and cat anatomy are very different. Humans have a very thin nail with a very large piece of bone. Cats, on the other hand, have a large nail attached to a very tiny piece of bone. Cats are not left with "stumps".
If you believe in this mutilation, banned in over 25 countries and some American cities, is of benefit to the cat, or does them no harm, nothing will change your mind. You will always value your furniture over the welfare of your cat/s. Removing that last bone, your vet should have told you, changes how a cat's weight is distributed in the paw. Cats are digitigrades she told you or should have told you. Or she did tell you but you failed to hear her or understand what she said. Did she explain how the tendons shorten once the last digit is amputated? Did you understand what she was explaining?
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Yes, it is a significant alteration of the cat, but it is not realistically comparable to the amputation of the tips of your fingers.
No, it's more like the amputation of the last bone in your toes. You're also failing to grasp that cats use their claws for more than clawing a scratching post or cat tree - or GOD FORBID - your sofa.
I think we have to be carful in using what other contries or some cities or states have done, whether in this context or other. Laws are often passed as a result of political agendas to gain votes.
There is no evidence the banning of the mutilation of cat's paws, docking of dogs ears and tails was related to political issues. These are all unnecessary amputations and mutilations that are of no benefit to the animals.
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All you have to do is look at hot topics like abortion rights and gay marriage. Also I would caution against comparisons to other countries as they have very different cultural backgrounds that could be significant to topic at hand.
Oh it's obvious they are way ahead of us here in the USA where mutilating our pets are concerned. So are the USA cities way ahead of those USA cities who still allow these mutilations - despite cultural backgrounds or religious differences. Those countries are more progressive than the USA.
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It's easy to pick and choose from what we like in foreign policies. In many European countries horse meat is as common on the dinner table as other meats. Maybe we should allow horse meat in US supermarkets and restaurants?
Cats will hide any discomfort until or unless it is agonizing. Whether you notice it or not, the change, the crippling, is there.
Our psychotic declawed boy had one favorite activity. He would stand over the electric heater, when it was off, and dig his little nubs into the grating. He would "scratch" at this heater with such great joy that he would purr loudly and get all cuddly. He truly enjoyed this. If it caused him pain, I don't think he would approach it with such happiness. I was happy that he found some substitute to the pure joy that scratching and it's associated stretching seem to bring.
I suspect very few vets are truly good at this procedure and for many cats, it can be a terrible experience. I think we were lucky. And I am glad we had this option for our boy, without it, he never would have never been able to receive the medical care he deserved.
The last thing I will say about it is that it's not necessary if furniture protection is the ultimate goal. When they were kittens my two guys tore up the back of a chair climbing up it before I figured out how to redirect them with proper scratching posts around the house and spraying them with a gentle spray water bottle. They are now 11 years old and I can honestly say they haven'y clawed at any furniture since they were trained as little guys. We've reroped and re carpeted a few posts and they are very happy.
A couple of mine like to scratch/claw at this one spot where the back and one side of the couch meet. They've made a nice size hole there. Strategically draping an afghan over that area hides it on the one or two occasions I've felt the need to hide the hole, but I don't get a lot of company and the people who do come to my house are not the sort of people to be horrified that my living room isn't a showroom. I really don't care to associate with that type of person if I can help it.
My friends and family who have seen the hole have laughed and then launched into their own "my cat/dog did XYZ to my furniture/house" stories.
No one every claimed it benefits WILD cats and dogs living in the WILD. You're comparing animals living in natural conditions where their lifespans are much shorter, to domestic pets that live indoors and for many years. How would breast cancer or pyometra benefit our UNSPAYED cats and dogs? Or testicular cancer benefit our male pets?
Do some research on breast cancer and pyometra and testicular cancer in "intact" animals. It is to their benefit to spay/neuter them as well as ours. Declawing prevents no disease in the cat and is of no benefit to them at all.
Don't you watch TV or read the papers? There are indeed women who chose to have a hysterectomy and breast removal to prevent cancer. Drastic to be sure, but when they've lost mothers and sisters and Aunts to cancer... they do it. And don't compare cats to humans. They're totally different "animals."
I'm going to do so right now, I will claim right this minute that spaying and neutering benefits wild animals living in the wild. Ladies, if I may inquire, how would you feel if you were FORCED to breed as often as you are biologically capable of doing, from the point where you became sexually mature to the point when you die? Moms know, that giving birth and nurturing young takes something out of the female, every single time. It's worth it of course...but an unspayed female cat lives a life of hardship in the wild. The un-neutered males are driven by their hormones to fight and breed constantly.
It is in no domestic cat or dog's best interest to be let to fend for themselves in the wild, and it is even more not to their benefit to do so unspayed/unneutered. Declawed, it's pretty much a death sentence and it's only a matter of time, and probably not much, before it's carried out. Survival of the fittest, and all that.
But we're not talking about "in the wild" here. We're talking housecats. At least I hope so. Again, the benefits of spay/neuter go beyond physical health. Intact cats suffer stress because of their biology. Females go into heat, males are more aggressive, and both have more of a need to escape to breed. A fixed cat is happier, calmer, and less stressed in a human home. And, after all, we bred them to be our companions. Not wild animals. Beyond that, from my perspective, stress can cause actual illness in my cat. He has a virus which only is likely to act up and make him ill if he's very stressed. It's in everyone's best interest to keep him calm and happy.
But back to the matter of declawing.
If we could gradually breed a cat with no claws, with the biology to accomodate that, fine. But until then...having claws is not a problem for the cat. It's a problem for the owner (SOME owners.) And there are far kinder ways to address it.
Our psychotic declawed boy had one favorite activity. He would stand over the electric heater, when it was off, and dig his little nubs into the grating. He would "scratch" at this heater with such great joy that he would purr loudly and get all cuddly. He truly enjoyed this. If it caused him pain, I don't think he would approach it with such happiness. I was happy that he found some substitute to the pure joy that scratching and it's associated stretching seem to bring.
I suspect very few vets are truly good at this procedure and for many cats, it can be a terrible experience. I think we were lucky. And I am glad we had this option for our boy, without it, he never would have never been able to receive the medical care he deserved.
Yeah my cat does the same thing with the big cardboard box that we keep our fireplace kindling in. And the box from a case of a paper that she's currently claimed as one of her beds. She also gnaws on the boxes (all of them, not just those two) to carve curves into the top that are the perfect size for her to perch her head against when she's laying down and hanging out. Sort of like the "Kilroy was here" drawing.
She also "scratches" at my thigh when it's supper time, in the exact same manner except she can't get purchase on it because it's thicker than the wall of a cardboard box.
If it were up to her, she'd shred every piece of furniture in the house - she scratches on all of them. I'm thinking she wouldn't do that if it hurt so much. She'd find something else to do that didn't involve hooking painful mutilated stubs against a semi-hard surface and yanking at them, on purpose, several times every day - mimicking the exact same thing cats with intact claws do - except without the shredding.
I suspect very few vets are truly good at this procedure and for many cats, it can be a terrible experience. I think we were lucky. And I am glad we had this option for our boy, without it, he never would have never been able to receive the medical care he deserved.
They have those soft claw covers at every pet store I can think of. There is no need to mutilate your cat so you can handle him. Your vet should also have taught you how to "scruff" your cat so he could get the care he deserved without being mutilated.
I'm going to do so right now, I will claim right this minute that spaying and neutering benefits wild animals living in the wild.
Yes, if you want them to go extinct, round them all up and spay/neuter them.
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Ladies, if I may inquire, how would you feel if you were FORCED to breed as often as you are biologically capable of doing, from the point where you became sexually mature to the point when you die? Moms know, that giving birth and nurturing young takes something out of the female, every single time. It's worth it of course...but an unspayed female cat lives a life of hardship in the wild. The un-neutered males are driven by their hormones to fight and breed constantly.
No animal in the wild is FORCED to breed. When conditions are not good, food scarce and/or disease present, or the female is underweight, many wild animals do not go into heat. Unless you have PROOF that unspayed cats in their natural environment in the area of Egypt suffer, you can't make that claim. Other countries are not the cat's "natural" environment. They were brought to other countries by man, so yes, they will/can/do suffer when on their own in an unnatural environment with a litter of kittens. I don't see the connection between spay/neuter and mutilating their paws.
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It is in no domestic cat or dog's best interest to be let to fend for themselves in the wild, and it is even more not to their benefit to do so unspayed/unneutered. Declawed, it's pretty much a death sentence and it's only a matter of time, and probably not much, before it's carried out. Survival of the fittest, and all that.
Those who de-claw as much as say they don't CARE if their cat is killed should it escape the house. Their sofa and other material things were safe. If they cared, and anyone with an IQ over 80 knows cats can and do slip out of the house occasionally, they wouldn't mutilate them rendering them helpless.
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But we're not talking about "in the wild" here. We're talking housecats. At least I hope so. Again, the benefits of spay/neuter go beyond physical health. Intact cats suffer stress because of their biology. Females go into heat, males are more aggressive, and both have more of a need to escape to breed. A fixed cat is happier, calmer, and less stressed in a human home. And, after all, we bred them to be our companions. Not wild animals. Beyond that, from my perspective, stress can cause actual illness in my cat. He has a virus which only is likely to act up and make him ill if he's very stressed. It's in everyone's best interest to keep him calm and happy.
And those soft claw covers would have worked wonderfully.
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But back to the matter of declawing.
If we could gradually breed a cat with no claws, with the biology to accomodate that, fine. But until then...having claws is not a problem for the cat. It's a problem for the owner (SOME owners.) And there are far kinder ways to address it.
Sooner or later it will be outlawed here in the USA. Until then, cats will continue to suffer this unnecessary surgery.
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