Posted on 02/08/2017 7:54:15 AM PST by Olog-hai
Cats would keep their claws under a bill that would make New Jersey the first state to prohibit declawing.
The measure, which cleared the lower house of the Legislature last month, bans onychectomies and flexor tendonectomies on a cat or any animal unless a veterinarian deems them medically necessary. A vote on the measure was delayed in a state Senate committee Monday, and it’s not clear when it will move forward.
The practice, often undertaken to prevent cats from shredding furniture or injuring humans or other pets, is already banned in several California cities and in nearly 20 countries. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
Next thing you know they’ll make neutering and spaying of pets illegal.
As far as I know, he abruptly stopped clawing the sofa and never did it again.
As far as I'm concerned, de-clawing a adult cat is right up there with female genital mutilation - wouldn't do it to a young cat either.
“Better to be a cat with no claws and a good home than a cat with good claws and no home.” -— quote me.
I have worked with shelters all my life. I see cats thrown away because they mess up furniture or scratch their owners -— thousands of them over 60+ years!!!
I have declawed many, many cats -— hundreds of them. I have watched these cats live happy, healthy lifetimes with their owners -— owners who definitely would have let me know it if there were any problems.
And yes, many declawed cats can climb trees, hunt, and do extraordinary things -— although I ask owners promise me that their cats will be 100% indoors after declaw.
Declawing is not right for every cat and every owner -— but it is not wrong either if it keeps a loved cat in a good home.
Our current cat is declawed, as was her predecessor. Both of them were jumping around and playing by the time they got home from having the procedure done; so in our case, it didn't seem to be as "cruel and unusual" as some here suggest. She is an indoor cat only, and we only declawed the front claws. Having no front claws has not prevented her from killing a couple of small mice. She sometimes rubs her front paws on something as if she is "sharpening her claws". If she were an indoor/outdoor cat (which we try not to have), we would not have declawed her.
People need to understand that if they want people to provide homes for homeless cats, it has to be on the homeowner's terms. An ornery cat that cannot be broken from scratching is probably not going to stay in someone's home very long if they cannot declaw it.
I also have a tail-less Corgi whose tail was probably docked shortly after he was born. I guess I'm terrible. I'll get over it.
Yep. How many landlords will only accept spayed/neutered and declawed cats?
For the most part they're pretty good... except for one Siamese who still tries to nail the couch, but she's gotten better. My other Siamese always lays on the top of my office chair when I'm at the computer, and the leather is completely worn off... oh well.. no big deal. Perhaps next time around I'll just get concrete furniture.
A few weeks ago one of my cats got cornered by two beagles that escaped from a neighbor's house... if she didn't have claws she would have been toast.
And let’s make it illegal to circumcise male cats as well!
I was just kitten...
For decades my parents had a large orange tabby cat that had just the front paws declawed. His previous owner was an elderly friend who had died. He never had any apparent difficulties that we were aware of, other than he wasn't able to shred the furniture. I am not sure exactly how old he was when he died, but my parents had the cat for nearly two decades. It wasn't completely defenseless; when we brought our wienerdog over he would jump up in the air and scratch our little wiener with his back paws. Our dog was terrified of him.
We lived on a small farm and had many cats when I was growing up. We had them partially to keep the rodent population under control because corn, oats, hay and other horse, cow, and pig feed attracts mice and rats especially. So obviously we would not have wanted these cats to be declawed, we fed them, but they worked for a living.
I am very amused by the very obvious hypocrisy of so many cat owners. It is extremely common but irresponsible for owners to let cats who they claim to love roam free in urban areas. The Audubon society estimates that domestic and feral cats kill between “1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds in the lower 48 states every year—more than buildings, vehicles, and poisoning combined.”
http://www.audubon.org/news/cat-owners-turn-blind-eye-pets-violence
My guess is that declawed cats kill basically no birds per year. So despite all the howling from cat owners here about how “cruel” it is for kitties to be declawed, it does prevent a great deal of needless cruelty and violence against birds, squirrels, and other small animals. But I guess the pain and suffering and the needless murder of these cute little fuzzy and feathered animals are not nearly as important as the amusement it provides for domestic cats. ; )
Despite the previous paragraph I do not actually care a lot much one way or the other, since we live in a area that is close to wilderness I have appreciated greatly the rodent control that all the cats used to provide. I say “used to” because we had a group of coyotes who lived in the neighborhood until they ate all the cats that were being allowed to roam free and then moved on to another neighborhood. Kitty claws are actually not a credible threat to coyotes. For a while nearly every phone pole was converted into some sort of shrine with all the missing cat posters. So this one of the primary reasons I say it is irresponsible to let your beloved family cat roam free.
When I was a kid I do not remember one of our “farm cats” living to a ripe old age. Most of them were eventually killed either by larger predators or run over by cars. Such is the life of a “farm cat”, but how responsible is that really for a beloved domestic cat. The only cat that my parents ever had that lived to be really old was their declawed house cat.
I just do not believe cat declawing is the type of thing that the government has any business regulating. It is something that cat owners should be able to decide for themselves.
Thanks for sharing and adding sanity and reason to the conversation.
We have a varying number of feral cats that are abandoned in our area .. we live pretty far out in the countryside .. and we feed and water those who come by as long as they want to stay. Those remain completely feral, front claws and long snarly teeth .. you know, like a saber-tithed tooger. The oldest we've had here was a female who probably made 10 years or so, and a couple of big .. and I do mean BIG .. males who made it to 13 or so.
I try to tame any kittens that are born on the porch, getting them spayed/neutered, and findings friends and neighbors who are looking for a kitten/cat. It's up to them if they want to declaw them, but, as some have come by to visit our feeding site, most of them are probably indoor/outdoor cats. They still have their claws, but will come up to me and want to be cuddled.
Until we started feeding the local ferals, we had a little bit of a mice problem, but that has gone away (as have the snakes and toads that used to hang around the front porch). I've also seen a decrease in the number of jackrabbits that were digging in the yard.
One thing that I have seen lately that I hadn't seen before: the local bluejays, cardinals, and mocking birds will come onto the porch and eat the cat kibbles out of the feeding bowls. The few times that I've seen one of the older cats try to mess with them, the cat was chased off the porch wailing. Those particular birds don't take any crap off of any of these feral cats.
Passing through customs? So are they still illegal? [smile]
“I had two cats declawed some 10-15 years ago. One cat handled it well. The other did not. As for me - I will never declaw another cat again. And I don’t recommend it.”
I guess this means we must also stop circumcising all males. After all, it must not feel so good to the male baby when this procedure is done on them. So what if they will then be much more subject to infections throughout the man’s life. We just can’t have the male species being subject to some pain that occurs at the time of the circumcision.
Just as we can’t have a cat suffer any pain at the time the little kitty gets declawed. So what if fewer kittens will be adopted by folks and thus more of them will end up being subject to euthanasia for lack of anyone wanting to deal with the hassle and destruction caused by a cat that has not been declawed. (You can, you know, only declaw a kitten’s front claws, and leave the back ones on for them to protect themselves with, which is what I have done with all of my cats that I have owned over my lifetime.) One must keep in mind the law of unintended consequences when deciding whether to declaw or to circumcise.
Oh, and don’t forget that many male animals are “fixed” at a young age, so that they can’t propagate. Is that cruel and unusual punishment?
Cats and men have long memories, and they all remember the pain of their declawing and circumcisions for the rest of their lives. They remember every excruciating moment of their early childhood trauma. Hey all you men out there in Freeperdom, do you dwell on, remember, or otherwise condemn what you went through when a mere child subject to circumcision. I suspect a cat remembers the pain of its declawing when young about as much as men remember the pain of their childhood circumcisions.
This law about declawing is a crock. It’s more PC crap. Reminds me of how the animal cruelty folks have managed to get rid of most elephants from circuses, such as its most recent victory over Ringling Brothers. Soon it will be horse racing, and they’ve also had great success with removing performing fish from zoo’s. Soon zoo’s themselves will be victims of do-gooders and PC.
Hunting of course is a no no, although that and eating meat is what has allowed the human species to survive. What’s next? Oh, I know, you can’t have pets at all as it is cruel to keep them in captivity.
And of course the ultimate insult, aborting babies, real little human beings, now that is perfectly acceptable to those PETA types that profess such great concern for animals. The hypocrisy is overwhelming.
Does no one know how to clip a cats claws?
If one either plans on having dogs and cats in the same house or expects to have his or er cats get out once in a while, the kitties better keep their claws and the kittie parents need to get scratchers for the kitties to work on.
A better law would be to insist people not let their cats run wild outside. I have never understood why a responsible cat owner would let its cat out roaming around. What if dog owners were allowed to do that?
Agree.
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