Could we all agree to declaw mountain lions?
Yup. The coyote is a danger to anything smaller than a German Shepherd. People shoot coyotes all the time, and just leave the bodies, because they are a huge threat to pets and livestock. I know people with an irrational hatred of coyotes.
Declawing isn’t really comparable to spay/neuter, because “fixing” an animal statistically adds about six years to its life by sparing it from reproductive cancers. No cat ever had claw cancer. Even breeders usually fix retired breeding cats to spare them cancers.
Huh – really? Here’s it’s often the opposite – some won’t adopt a cat out if you’re going to let it outside.
Everyone I’ve ever met from England (not the whole UK, specifically England) has had a thing about getting outside every day. Not for strenuous exercise, but just for a brisk but maybe short walk, or even just 15 minutes of sitting in a park, but foul or fair, and even if they are sick, they have almost a superstition about getting outside everyday.
My personal experience of England is that if you waited for really nice days, you’d hardly ever get out-- on the other hand, they don’t have sub-zero days where you find homeless people frozen to death-- or even poor people who just can’t afford to properly heat their homes suffering from cold weather injuries. I think thy must project this onto their cats.
Anyway, I have had only two cats who really wanted to go out, and it’s because they liked novelty and people. One actually liked going to the vet. I used to take him visiting at a retirement home. The other actually goes for short walks on a leash, and wants everyone we meet to pet her. Like a dog. Most of my cats have not only been perfectly happy to stay in, they’ve practically been agoraphobic.
Not that I have ever heard of. There are lots of cats who live in flats (apartments) and cannot go outside because they’re just not clever at locking and unlocking doors etc. Yes, the cat rescue charities might prefer only to re-home cats to people with ground floor access to the great outdoors, but it is not at all uncommon to have a cat that is indoor only.
No de-clawing, though. That is illegal.
I had a misunderstanding with my friends cat the first time I met her. Apparently she decides when you stop petting her not you. My friend called me into the other room and when I pulled my hand away from her head she sunk into my hand right at the knuckle of my pointer finger. I pulled my hand, she pulled her paw, I shouted, she yelped and I ended up with my hand and one of her claw nails still stuck in the knuckle.
Zero reaction from her post yelp. She looked really sheepish until I went over to see if she was alright and soon I was petting her again and she was purring. There didn’t appear to be any pain or trauma at all. Fair to say, I couldn’t have my finger ripped off and have a similar reaction. Color me unconvinced about the horror of the procedure.
I am against declawing cats though but I wouldn’t make it illegal. I don’t think that a lack of empathy should be punishible.
What’s ironic is the second amendment defenders who declaw cats. Hey, I demand the right to defend myself but I will freely rob you of your ability to do likewise. I feel so strongly about this right that you can only deny them from mr by prying my gun from my cold dead fingers but someone weaker than me, they deserve no such rights. Clearly, these people do not respect the golden rule at all
I do worry about cat declawers though as they share a trait with another group; most serial killers started off mutilating animals. I’m not saying these people are serial killers but if bodies start popping up in your neighborhood and you don’t have any leads, you might want to check on the cat declawers…just in case.
Dude, you didn’t declaw that cat.
Probably similar to that but this claw didn’t fall off it was yanked off but it’s good to know that this was just accelarating a natural process.
No. It should be mandatory. Spaying and neutering should be illegal.
Also, buttering your cat’s paws and putting him on a window ledge on a windy day should get you a commendation of some sort.
Anecdotes from my experience:
debarked dogs “learn” to bark again, at about 60-70% volume (vet suggested it would happen)
cats claw furniture etc. to dull claws, so clipping claws can minimize furniture damage (somewhat)
declawed cats bite more without claws (injuries are worse)
In So Cal, at the urban/mountain interface, coyotes kill most of the missing cats.
discarded cat litter weight is probably keeping the San Andreas fault from splitting apart.
When most serial killers start off by paying someone else to mutilate animals for them, then you should worry. I doubt we have many DIY declawers around here.
Does nature count? 
(NOT a sneak brag)
I think that’s pretty insightful actually. I think we do have a thing about ‘getting outside’. The idea of spending a whole day indoors feels instinctively like a horrible waste of time to me, even if all that indoor time was spent doing fun, productive things. Weird.
I’m sure they must exist here, but I’d not really encountered the concept of ‘house cats’ until I joined this board. Everyone I have ever known here in England who had a cat, had a catflap fitted to the door and the cats could come and go as they please (often this results in the cats bringing dead and dying small prey into the house for the owners to fret over).
One of the key reasons I argued my family out of getting a cat is that we live in a house where the living space is all on the first floor - the ground floor is just garage and storage, and we would have to fit catflaps in several doors in order to provide outdoor access (and doing this would grant the animal access to dangerous areas such as the garage where my workbench, tools and half-formed projects with sharp corners and rotating knives.
So we got a small dog instead, who gets long walks three or four times a day, but has to ask to go out into the garden.
I’ve never worried about serial killers so I wouldn’t start then. I’ve made it clear that cat declawers are not serial killers but rather the share at least one trait, the desire to exert control over the lives of other living beings. Lots of people share that trait. Rapists for example as rape is about power not sex. For a more negative example, clergy have this trait. They’ve got themselves a rulebook and you’re going to follow it by God, literally, under penalty of death in some cases.
But seriously, the original statement was more tongue in cheek. This wasn’t the debate I was expecting to have but here we go. Desire to control others is a trait that a lot of people share, to different levels. It’s ok to share this trait but don’t take it too far. That’s my only point.
I don’t think cat declawers are evil but they possess a far greater amount of this trait than I do. I don’t feel comfortable doing permanent damage to a living thing for my own convenience. I’m not even comfortable with spaying and neutering but at least there is a non selfish justification for this.
Except you’re making the choice for the cat for your own convenience, not for the benefit of the cat. Don’t make it sound like you’re making the decision they’d want because you know them best when you’re actually talking about mutilating an animal and making their life worse because it makes things easier for you.
In this analogy, you’re the other cat who scratches your cat’s face off. Is that the position you want to take? Because horrible shit happens, well, we might as well inflict horrible shit on those we protect and watch over.
I was just going by what the other poster said - “Cats in the UK go outside, that’s just the way it is”
Guess that ISN’T just the way it is.
I’ve been parusing Google Scholar this morning, seems the most outstanding feature of scientific research into the effects of amputation onychectomy is the lack of such research. I’ve found plenty of information to support both sides of the issue. It appears about one in four house cats have been declawed {Cite} in the USA/Canada, maybe we have a thriving back-alley industry in Europe. That’s a hell of a lot of house cats to be declawed if such was obviously disabling.
Using a scratching post as an alternative relies on effective use … I found some good information in this article “The problem of destructive scratching by cats” {PDF}. This information is consistent with my experiences; back door trim and bathroom vanity legs indoors, compost bin outdoors. I just think this is worth a try before we declaw. Whatever the long term effects, it’s still surgery and surgery is risky business.
One thing was clear in my readings this morning, comparing spay/neuter to declawing is wrong. There’s profound and well-documented evidence that spay/neuter greatly extends the cat’s life and well-being. Even proper cat breeders will spay/neuter their stock once they get past their reproductive prime. For the pet quality animal, these reproductive organs are completely useless, and prone to cancers and diseases that are basically unheard of in claws. For example, intact tomcats spend a lot of time trying to kill each other, they don’t try to claw each other to death because they have claws, it’s because they have balls.
What is clear is that declawing cats is strictly cosmetic. I’m finding no claims that this in any way improves the well-being of the cat or lengthens their lifespan. When the non-cat owner walks in your house, it’s not the scratches they see that causes them to ask “OH, just how many cats do you own?”
If it turns out that cutting off a humans balls extends their lifetime would you be good with someone in charge of you unilaterally deciding to chop them off, you know, for your own good? I’m pretty sure it would make you a bit less violent as well. This seems like a poor excuse for the practice. It also makes no sense since they were whacking balls long before they even did the study. That’s not the reason, it’s a side effect at best.
Sure, but that’s pet ownership. Whether I’m commanding a dog to sit and stay off the bed or training a cat to shit in a box or giving a goldfish or turtle a lifetime in a glass tank, I’m exerting control over it. They don’t get a vote in how to lead their little animal lives.
Well, it sometimes is, and sometimes isn’t. I just wanted to clarify that there aren’t actual laws requiring cats to go outside or to be able to go outside. 