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Do we have evidence that declawing causes lasting pain or psychological damage to the cat? I admittedly have no idea how’d you’d test this in an animal—but it seems like it should be a prerequisite to banning the procedure.
Your stance if generalized would imply we could perform arbitrary acts of animal cruelty unless evidence of their harmfulness emerges.
Not a cat owner, so actually curious: I have a friend cat who always scratches me, which is quite painful and leaves marks. Is there a way to trim the nails so this doesn't happen, or is the only solution to avoid the cat?
The best solution is to avoid the cat. I've spend my whole life around cats and dogs, and getting scratched and bitten is pretty much a given -- it's instinctual hunt and play behavior. It's just life, if you ask me; it's painful and leaves marks, but that's just an irrelevant side effect of participation.
The thing that I don't really get is that people want to have an animal in their homes, but they don't like the true animal behaviors so they want to stop them from doing what they naturally do. People want cute and cuddly cats, but when the cat scratches someone its acting bad. In reality it's just responding to its environment and its acting like the animal that it is.
Understanding better your cat and building a relationship of trust will be even better. My last cat never, ever, used seriously his claws against me. Of course I never, ever, used my claws against him. Reciprocity.
It's not exactly a quick fix, but how many generations would it take to breed cats with substantially softer claws? This could be an interesting program perhaps for the government to undertake. I also wonder if crispr or embryo selection could be used if a GWAS could find genes that lead to softer claws. The selection techniques have been used to improve milk yields for cows, so it seems like making cats which don't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is pretty similar to training, isn't it? As in, training a dog is really to break their natural behaviour and move from slave for food/fun to slave by default. Yet, it's also widely accepted. (Yes, I have a dog)
'pets' and 'natural behaviour' do not really play along. All domesticated animals are far from being 'natural' in almost any way. That said, I consider declawing a form of assault to the animal, taking away from it the only tools it can use and the main weapon to defend itself.
Do we have evidence that declawing causes lasting pain or psychological damage to the cat? I admittedly have no idea how’d you’d test this in an animal—but it seems like it should be a prerequisite to banning the procedure.
It is usually done to prevent the cat from a natural behaviour (scratching) which can usually be fixed by getting a proper scratching pole and monitoring you can for a week or two to prevent them from scratching anywhere else. Declawing often introduces other behavioural problems (biting, soiling outside the cat box) which are usually a sign of your cat not liking the situation. Castration is for the male cat a small…
Do we have evidence that declawing causes lasting pain or psychological damage to the cat? I admittedly have no idea how’d you’d test this in an animal—but it seems like it should be a prerequisite to banning the procedure.
Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the opposite side? To allow such procedure, it should be proven that there are no adverse effects.
As is, euthanasia of cats and dogs is generally considered morally acceptable, and we can reasonably predict that more cats will be euthanatized as a result of this law. So if there weren't clear evidence that declawing was inherently harmful to a pet cat, I would consider it misguided to ban the practice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is pretty similar to training, isn't it? As in, training a dog is really to break their natural behaviour and move from slave for food/fun to slave by default. Yet, it's also widely accepted. (Yes, I have a dog)
'pets' and 'natural behaviour' do not really play along. All domesticated animals are far from being 'natural' in almost any way. That said, I consider declawing a form of assault to the animal, taking away from it the only tools it can use and the main weapon to defend itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Failing to declaw an outdoor cat lets the cat kill more birds; cats are an invasive species that kill billions of birds per year.
The ecological impact of a few cats is tiny compared to that of a human. If you really care about the environment, don't have children and maybe kill yourself too
On avian populations, that simply isn't true.
"According to their calculations, outdoor cats killed somewhere in the ballpark of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion small mammals in the U.S. per year—far exceeding any other human-influenced cause of avian death, such as pesticides or collisions with window."[1]
I agree with your concerns regarding human overpopulation though. My wife and I aren't having kids.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-...