I ditched the whole feeding by alarm system, since it wasn’t doing any good. If I’m going to be pestered for food I might as well get the credit for it.
Our cat is allergic and would get these patches on her skin that she’d lick until they’re raw and bleeding. We’ve gone through a number of hypo-allegenic dry foods, but nothing’s worked, which is why we’re trying an all canned diet. The vet gives her a steroids shot every so often to hold off the allergies, but that increases the chance of diabeties in the future, so we want to make sure that she stays a healthy weight. Under steriods she seems to be more hungry and less active, which doesn’t help.
The litters are only unwanted from the perspective of the owner; I imagine the cat wants to reproduce. As Robert Sharp suggests, both sterilization and declawing are done primarily for the benefits of the owner.
You could easily rewrite your second paragraph to argue against routine sterilization. If you don’t care about your cat’s desire to reproduce, and can’t handle the responsibility helping your cat raise litters, you really just shouldn’t have a pet. Same method of argument.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m strongly for sterilization, and mildly opposed to routine declawing. I just see them both as decisions that involve cost/benefit analyses, and most of the rationales for these costs and benefits are from the perspective of owner convenience, not desires of the pet. Given all the cats that are euthanized each year, I certainly would accept the cost of claw amputation, if that allowed the benefit of life and regular food and shelter.
That just seems really unfair. I care about both, actually, but in different ways. I care about my arms too, which would also get scratched. I care about my other cats, who STILL get paws in their eyes and have problems. Imagine if those were claw marks! You seem to be assuming a lot in making this claim, and it sounds more angry than reasonable. As Sidd noted, we can work these arguments in different ways. If I discover that declawing is inhumane, I’ll stop doing it. That’s why I am asking. But the way you are conveying some of this sounds more dogmatic and emotional than anything else, which is making it hard for me to tell what’s what.
