jarbaby, of course cats and toddlers are different. Cats are cuter.
I don’t really like declawing, as I said before, but I certainly don’t find it inhumane. Yeah, it sounds really brutal, but a lot of medical procedures do if you describe them in graphic detail. You don’t want to know what we do in a canine total hip replacement.
There are cases where I wholeheartedly support declawing. Destructive or aggressive animals, where the owner could live with the consequences but will come to resent the cat, often wind up at the shelter, out on the street, or simply neglected and treated as something to be endured until the animal dies. None of those are good options. Cats returned to the shelter for behavior problems are usually considered unadoptable and get put down right off. Out on the street the cat runs the risk of getting hit by a car, starving to death, being attacked and killed by other animals, you name it. Being neglected and treated as a burden is no way for a cat to live either.
So that leaves declawing. The cat has a little discomfort, the owner has a vet bill and some guilt, and they live happily together for years to come. Hell, we had one patient who was so damn hard for the owner to handle that we finally declawed him in the rear, too. The lady put up with years of him clawing the shit out of her and trying behavior modification before she reached that point. What else could she have done?
** I would actually oppose this. I’d support the reduction of the dog and cat populations through predation instead.
** I have no real objection to these.
** No. No. Yes.
** And in some way they’re the same. And please don’t make assumptions about what I would or would not do. I realize it was only for the purposes of debate, but it’s annoying anyway.
Cats need to scratch. Dogs need to bark. Removing their claws to prevent them from doing this, or removing their voiceboxes to silence them, is a denial of their needs. In a very real sense, it treats them not as creatures but as objects.
Please tell me you don’t understand the term “predation,” or that I’m being wooshed. Otherwise, I’m forced to conclude you would want to legitimize the hunting of dogs and cats in lieu of spaying or neutering. In other words, you would rather subject the dog and cat populations to the fear and abuse of hunting instead of a simple, relatively painless operation.
Well, either you’re advocating the hunting of dogs and cats by people, or you’re suggesting they be turned loose to be hunted by wild animals.
Predation: 1) the act of plundering or preying; 2) the method of existence of predatory animals. Source: Webster’s New World College Dictionary
I suppose you could also be advocating their release into the wild to fend for themselves, but that is crueler than anything else suggested, in my opinion, so I didn’t consider it.
However, now that I see you would support the euthanization of children, I’m not sure we’re working from the same set of values. I’m from Earth, you see.
I think you need to define your terms a little better. In the first place, “euthanasia” typically refers to a quick and painless death. Although it’s usually understood that such a death is an effort to relieve needless suffering, that’s not necessarily the case.
In the second place, many children have suffered from “incurable” diseases that were later cured or at least became treatable. Polio, for example. You’d advocate killing all the children who contracted polio, rather than work toward a cure?
In the third place, the average thinking human places a little more importance on the welfare of a child versus the welfare of a dog or cat.
In the fourth place, I wish you would definitively answer what you meant by “predation.” Frankly, none of the scenarios I can think of for that term are remotely humane, but maybe you’re thinking of something else. Or you’re an idiot. It was a tossup for a while, but frankly the smart money is starting to bet on the latter option.
The question regarded whether I would ever euthanize a child. The answer is ‘yes’: there are some circumstances where I would.
If this word were (AFAIK, incorrectly) interpreted to refer to killing unwanted children, the answer would be ‘no’. (Or at least the state of the world would have to become much, much worse.)
Are they suffering needlessly? Do they want to live? Will their disease inevitably kill them while at the same time preventing them from doing things they find worthwhile?
The answers to these questions would determine my response. In principle, I see no a priori reason to deny children the right to choose death any more than anyone else (and I am quite firmly in favor of the right-to-die movement… just not the inevitable nutcases it attracts).
Thirdly: so? A majority of humanity can be mistaken; does it matter if more people value one thing than another?
Fourthly: Predation. You know, death by predators. Bobcats, wolves, etc.
Take away the predation and you can severely damage a species. Haven’t you ever heard of “wolves and caribou”?
So rather than a fairly painless procedure like spaying or neutering, you would have litters of kittens or puppies thrown in the wild to be killed by predators or hit by cars whatever befalls them? Bizarre.
No no no. I’d prefer for natural population control to be instituted. Dumping loads of baby animals in some kind of weird animal-preserve-o-death is NOT what I’m going for.
I just realized how easily you can rewrite the lyrics to No Doubt’s Hey Baby to be all about you-EG change
“Hey Baby, hey baby, hey”
to
"Jarbaby, Jarbabyj"
I expect for the next week or so, I’ll be suddenly woken up by more lyrics as they occur to me. Eventually, I’ll sit up at 3 am and start singing the whole song.
Somehow, this is your fault. I’m not sure just how exactly. But, I’ll figure that out too.
Ah! But what most people don’t know about Wilhelm Shakespear is that his works were really written by Kristophe Mkharlo. Honestly! It is the best kept secret in almost all of German literature!
Perhaps we should take a non-coercive approach to the rearing of domestic pets. Let them decide if they want to be neutered, spayed, declawed, or made into bonsai art. I think if you explain it properly, pets will decide to forgo carnal pleasures and spend their time mending all of the furniture you coerced them into shredding. TVAA, are you starting up the “TPS” (Taking Pets Seriously) branch for the TCS people?
At the very least, spaying and neutering your pets prevents you from breeding ones that are sufficiently intelligent (and concerned about your preferences) to be properly trained.
They grow up to become Shakespears, and Nobels, and Einsteins, and Hawkings.
They unfortunately also grow up to become maniacal dictators and angels of ‘mercy’ sometimes.
How many animals improve the quality of life of their own species, other than human beings?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we’re more ‘important’ per se than any other organism here on the face of the earth. All are needed for a balanced ecosystem. But a human child has a much greater potential than a kitten does. And I so love kittens.
jarb, it is amusing me greatly that you keep typoing my name into Lady Venom’s but not in a bad way.
but not in a bad way.