Yeah, I should have expanded that - the Seattle Humane Society only puts animals to sleep when they have very severe forms of aggression. Merely being “unfriendly to children” is no where near enough. And from his story, that’s all it was.
Spoofy said the cat bit everybody.
Yeah, and it’s a cat. It probably had a bunch of issues that he wasn’t equipped to deal with and that’s why others - myself included - think he should have handed it over to people trained and prepared to deal with problem animals.
I don’t want to get all weepy about killing an animal when I eat bacon from animals every bit as smart as a cat every chance I get, but there’s a pact you make with any animal you bring into your home and I think that part of that promise is that you won’t kill it unless you have absolutely no other choice.
Also, fat cat = feline diabetes, which leads to a very unpleasant life for the cat and a very unpleasant duty for the owner of trying to stick a needle into something with teeth every day for the remainder of its miserable existance. So there’s a good reason to try to trim them down. Remember, in the wild they’d get a lot less crap food and have to work a lot harder for it.
Not if it is an indoor only cat though. None of our cats are allowed outside, ever (they would definitely die in this area). So they are declawed. What are the painful side effects?
Imagine having the first joint of your fingers removed. This is what happens to a cat during declawing. It is known to cause pain (amputee pain as well as the procedure/recovery being painful), and it has behavioral effects: in particular, declawed cats are known to bite more, becaue their means of defense (their front claws) is no longer there.
Obviously I’m not going to change anyone’s mind here, but many countries have outlawed declawing (along with other cosmetic things like tail docking, etc.) The US and Canada are really the only countries where declawing is commonplace. I consider it very much a “vanity” procedure – I have owned cats my whole life, and have never had a furniture issue.
I would rather go through the hassle of using those plastic safety paws things rather than have my cats declawed. It’s pretty nasty.
Too bad about your baby-eating cat, Spoofy. I personally would have given it to the SPCA myself, but hey, sometimes people (and cats) just have to be put down for everybodys good. The evil ones.
I would never get a cat declawed again. I would sooner give the cat away than do that again. At the time that we did it, cat #1 was not so far gone that she couldn’t have found a home…that was about seven years ago and we put her to sleep about two years ago.
Man what a downer. I thought I could sound like a callous pet owner and mean father in this thread and instead I’m forced to be all honest and sensitive. Thanks McMaster.
:(
Are you sure it’s your kid that’s autistic?
Definitely. Definitely it’s my daughter. Definitely.
Our cat was starting to get a bit chubby when she got mostly wet food, but we got some advice that dry food was better for her teeth so now she gets as much dry food as she wants, and a small can of wet food every two or three days as a treat. She’s an indoor cat but still runs around a lot, and is back to a normal size.
Half of what I know about cats is what I read when googling trying to find out how to cajole/coerce our cat to use her scratching tree; apparently another reason not to declaw is that the daily scratching regimen helps the cat stretch and exercise its back muscles (maybe that was just scratching-tree-company propaganda though).
I guess I got very, very lucky with my cat. The day I brought her home, I bought her a scratching tree and introduced her to it. I gently put her front paws on it. She’s been using it ever since.
She also uses my office chair to scratch, but that’s OK.
Yeah, that is lucky – at least compared to us. Our cat used to always claw the furniture and totally ignored the scratching tree when we first bought it. I went back to the store and asked them what to do about it, and they sold me some kind of pheromone drops to put on the tree to attract the cat, but she only ended up rubbing her face on the sexed-up scratching tree and not scratching it. I tried putting her paws on the tree but that didn’t work either. Eventually we lured her to the tree with a mouse-on-a-string toy and got her to accidentally sink her claws into it a few times, and gave her a treat when she did so – that did the trick. Now she gives the tree a good clawing a few times a day and then comes running for her treat.
Hey, I was sincerely asking. No need for the passive aggression. I’m curious though how you would know a cat is feeling the kind of pain you describe. I mean, I wouldn’t want my first joint removed, but I’m not sure it would be particularly painful, at least not long term. Obviously, there is short term pain, but that is probably true of getting them fixed too, which everyone recommends. NONE of my cats bites (we have 6 now). All of them would have been put to sleep if we had not adopted them (i.e. we didn’t own them from birth), and all of them claw at the furniture, even without having front claws (they have rear claws).
Again, I am just curious. How is this so different from having them fixed, which also has behavioral side effects?
They don’t have to walk on their genitals, for one thing.
Sounds like I have to have a conversation with the guy who sold me my cat.
they always try to pull that “cats can walk on their genitals” thing. Don’t take that shit.
A lot of it has to do with the muscular attachment that in involved with the retracting of the claw, When the join is removed, the cat isn’t able to properly use the muscles/tendons.
Amputees have phantom pain as well.
As far as why it’s different from being fixed? Having organs removed doesn’t involve the same kind of muscular/nerve trauma that declawing does. Adn the behavior changes are more positive – cats are less aggressive, and less prone to wandering, as well as not spraying.
And I’m not trying to be passive/agressive. Declawing is one of those things some people just believe in, and I’m not out to change anyone’s mind on the subject. I just work in the veterinary field, and I’ve never felt declawing to be right.
At the risk of being flippant, isn’t that a matter of opinion? I mean as long as we are comparing cats to humans (with phantom pains and all), isn’t it possible the cat would have a better life (from its perspective, whatever that means) if it could spray things and wander and be aggressive. I mean you and Jason seem to be claiming that cats are better off if they can walk on their claws and scratch things, both of which are the natural ways of cats. But so is aggression and wandering and spraying, all of which we stop them from doing.
Put differently, the traits you are calling positive are positive because we don’t want our pets to be that way. And yet, you seem to be calling people out who don’t want their pets to claw up their houses.
I’m not trying to start a mean argument or anything, just a debate over what is and what is not acceptable with pets. As an ethicist, these issues really do concern me.
Good point about the traits being positive in the eyes of owners, Robert. I’d like to see controlled studies regarding declawed cats biting more, since all the declawed cats I had growing up didn’t bite, and instinctually continued to use their front paws to defend themselves. Chronic phantom limb pain is certainly plausible to me, since I know amputees have it, and the possibility of this chronic condition (which would be hard for me as an owner to discover) is a difference between declawing and spaying/neutering, which doesn’t have chronic pain as an after effect.
I have an 11-year-old and a 2-year-old cat, both go outside in our gated backyard with supervision, but are primarily inside cats. I got the front claws of the 11-year-old removed in kittenhood, at the time he was neutered. I figured he gets a better life with me than the Humane Society, and the cost of that is his testicles and first paw joints. By the time I got the 2-year-old, I was willing to try to train him and avoid declawing. Sadly for him, the testicles still had to go. Interestingly, the declawed older cat does bite harder in playfighting, relative to the kitten. The kitten is happy scratching a cardboard scratchboard with catnip, and a 99 cent wicker hamper in our bedroom, so he’s not destructive.
I admit I was declawing mainly because that was the custom with the pets with which I was raised. We’ll probably not declaw as a rule, but I’d still have no problem getting the front claws removed in a kitten that was showing destructive habits.
Spaying and neutering serves a much more important purpose than simple vanity. It prevents animals from producing unwanted litters, which then have to be euthanised for the crime of not having a home.
And all technical veterinarian jargon aside – if you care more about your furniture than you do about your pets, you really just shouldn’t have a pet.