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I can't believe the huge anti-declaw movement that's going on. It baffles my mind. Given how harsh animals out in mother nature have it, to worry about a domestic housecat that doesn't ever go outside losing it's claws should be the least of a person's concern. First world problems if you ask me. I mentioned in the pet forum I simply wouldn't get a cat, and that's what everyone recommended. Fine.
Yet they somehow justify spay and neutering them as necessary... consider how you would feel without your sexual drive.... Actually I think it would probably do our species some good, though admittedly everything men have done throughout human history they've done to get inside a woman's hole. Yes there are some that achieve for achievement sake but most of them need that ***** as a carrot to motivate them.
What does sexual drive motivate an animal to do? Fight, hump, spray, wander.
Every watched a litter of pups or kittens euthanized or seen them dumped on the side of the road?
I don't, no. I'm not a vet nor a doctor nor a neuter/spayologist.
We adopt/rescue a cat that has already had that done, for a fee of 75.00.
Quote:
Originally Posted by McGowdog
We adopt our family. We take them as they come.
I don't mean to say we go out into the field and grab a ferile cat. We go down to the shelter. Our(MrsGowdog and I) last two cats lived 21 and 17 years respectively. Our cats are indoor only cats. When they both (the cat she had when I met her and another we got after getting married and had our house built) recently passed, we replaced them with two kittens both with claws. Our leather couches have that Olde Worlde furniture look.
...consider how you would feel without your sexual drive... Actually I think it would probably do our species some good...
This can be experiminted with by men. Drink three 16.9 ounce Svelte soy drinks every day for six months and see how you feel.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stockwiz
What if we just genetically engineered cats and removed their drive to use their claws? We could do that with all animal species... how dare a Lion kill a Zebra to survive? We're gonna tweak with genes to make them vegans!
I guess we have to genetically engineer all the species on the planet so they meet with the bleeding heart's sensibilities.
It’s hard to not feel sorry for the gazelle, even though predator/prey relations have been part of the natural world for millennia. But what if prey didn’t have to suffer like this?
This is the question posed by philosophers who believe all suffering should be terminated. These philosophers propose that we eradicate predation, so sentient animals never have to feel this pain again.The idea is that to relieve suffering, predators should be genetically altered to no longer be carnivorous.
Why would anyone not use alternatives like the caps or trimming the claws?
I have heard the same mentality with problem dogs. The owners get a barking fine and instead of trying training, bark collar, etc., it's off to the shelter. Instead of keeping the dog inside, off to the shelter. Why even have an animal if you are not willing to work with it if it has a problem. We make them adapt to our lifestyles so sometimes we need to help them in ways that may inconvenience us.
Oh yes, some people have their dogs - debarked....
Trimming did not work. Caps come off. I like my cats and take good care of them. I like my furniture too. Not destroying the furniture is a requirement for living here. Sometimes things are easy fixes. The last puppy we raised liked to chew electrical wires so we coated them with something tastes awful. My current cat (17 and on the mend from surgery) has taken to peeing on the couches and beds so we put up baby gates she can't jump over, covered the couch in the basement with a plastic drop cloth and keep her out of the bedrooms (she is NOT happy about that). If there's a way around the problem I'll take it but I'm not having thousands of dollars of furniture damaged.
I'm getting a new cat in a few weeks (after S's leg mends from the surgery) hoping that having some company might help her behavior which has become worse since we moved and she can no longer go out into the back yard, doesn't live with the dog or my grand children. If he tears up the furniture, he'll get declawed too though I will try caps first to see if they've made any improvements on keeping them on in the lasts 15 years. He's a stray my niece has been working with for six months to like people. She's caring for him while S's leg mends. Will he be declawed? That depends on whether or not I can keep him from destroying about $20k worth of furniture we own. What I won't do is go back on my word to give him a home. THAT would be cruel.
Given a choice between declawing or putting an animal down I will chose declawing every time.
As to barking collars, they don't work. Our last dog was an Australian Shepard who barked at a leaf blowing across the yard. The breeder warned us that the only fix she's ever had work is debarking. It's a breed characteristic that they bark at everything. The breeder had her dogs debarked for this reason. Fortunately we were in a house and had tolerant neighbors so he just barked every time a leaf blew across the yard. He was funny. He knew the neighbors and if they were in the back yard all was well but if he saw them in the front yard he felt compelled to let us know they'd gotten out of their yard. I miss him but he's my dd's dog not mine and we live in a condo now with no place for him to run and my neighbors are NOT tolerant. Seriously these people need something to do besides report on how long someone parks in the guest parking lot.
Trimming did not work. Caps come off. I like my cats and take good care of them. I like my furniture too. Not destroying the furniture is a requirement for living here. Sometimes things are easy fixes. The last puppy we raised liked to chew electrical wires so we coated them with something tastes awful. My current cat (17 and on the mend from surgery) has taken to peeing on the couches and beds so we put up baby gates she can't jump over, covered the couch in the basement with a plastic drop cloth and keep her out of the bedrooms (she is NOT happy about that). If there's a way around the problem I'll take it but I'm not having thousands of dollars of furniture damaged.
I'm getting a new cat in a few weeks (after S's leg mends from the surgery) hoping that having some company might help her behavior which has become worse since we moved and she can no longer go out into the back yard, doesn't live with the dog or my grand children. If he tears up the furniture, he'll get declawed too though I will try caps first to see if they've made any improvements on keeping them on in the lasts 15 years. He's a stray my niece has been working with for six months to like people. She's caring for him while S's leg mends. Will he be declawed? That depends on whether or not I can keep him from destroying about $20k worth of furniture we own. What I won't do is go back on my word to give him a home. THAT would be cruel.
Given a choice between declawing or putting an animal down I will chose declawing every time.
As to barking collars, they don't work. Our last dog was an Australian Shepard who barked at a leaf blowing across the yard. The breeder warned us that the only fix she's ever had work is debarking. It's a breed characteristic that they bark at everything. The breeder had her dogs debarked for this reason. Fortunately we were in a house and had tolerant neighbors so he just barked every time a leaf blew across the yard. He was funny. He knew the neighbors and if they were in the back yard all was well but if he saw them in the front yard he felt compelled to let us know they'd gotten out of their yard. I miss him but he's my dd's dog not mine and we live in a condo now with no place for him to run and my neighbors are NOT tolerant. Seriously these people need something to do besides report on how long someone parks in the guest parking lot.
The first time I had ever heard of this was about 1973 when I was a lass. A man in our neighborhood had a dog in his yard that couldnt bark and someone told me why it couldnt bark. Then I heard a few months later he had been broken into and robbed. Karma.
I have found that a water hose works well. They hate that.
Trimming did not work. Caps come off. I like my cats and take good care of them. I like my furniture too. Not destroying the furniture is a requirement for living here. Sometimes things are easy fixes. The last puppy we raised liked to chew electrical wires so we coated them with something tastes awful. My current cat (17 and on the mend from surgery) has taken to peeing on the couches and beds so we put up baby gates she can't jump over, covered the couch in the basement with a plastic drop cloth and keep her out of the bedrooms (she is NOT happy about that). If there's a way around the problem I'll take it but I'm not having thousands of dollars of furniture damaged.
I'm getting a new cat in a few weeks (after S's leg mends from the surgery) hoping that having some company might help her behavior which has become worse since we moved and she can no longer go out into the back yard, doesn't live with the dog or my grand children. If he tears up the furniture, he'll get declawed too though I will try caps first to see if they've made any improvements on keeping them on in the lasts 15 years. He's a stray my niece has been working with for six months to like people. She's caring for him while S's leg mends. Will he be declawed? That depends on whether or not I can keep him from destroying about $20k worth of furniture we own. What I won't do is go back on my word to give him a home. THAT would be cruel.
Given a choice between declawing or putting an animal down I will chose declawing every time.
As to barking collars, they don't work. Our last dog was an Australian Shepard who barked at a leaf blowing across the yard. The breeder warned us that the only fix she's ever had work is debarking. It's a breed characteristic that they bark at everything. The breeder had her dogs debarked for this reason. Fortunately we were in a house and had tolerant neighbors so he just barked every time a leaf blew across the yard. He was funny. He knew the neighbors and if they were in the back yard all was well but if he saw them in the front yard he felt compelled to let us know they'd gotten out of their yard. I miss him but he's my dd's dog not mine and we live in a condo now with no place for him to run and my neighbors are NOT tolerant. Seriously these people need something to do besides report on how long someone parks in the guest parking lot.
That cedar fence board works great for the stray cat that adopted us. We tried all that stuff one can get at the pet store.
We cut the board so that one side is about 4 ft long the shorter side is the remainder of the board. We had a piece of wood in the garage about 2 ft long. he screwed in the fence boards to create 2 different angles for the cat to stretch on. Just made a triangle. The longer board is at a steep angle It works great. The cat likes it. When she shredded the boards on one side, dh just flipped them over. It lasted a couple of years. Way better than those carpet things. Cleaner and cheaper than the corrugated cardboard ones that get shredded in a week. She never goes near the furniture.
I have no doubt that cats adopted by knowledgeable anti-declawing families have much happier and better homes than those adopted by such finicky "house-proud" owners!
That is because you assume that all people have their cats declawed because they are "house proud". But I know other reasons people have their cats declawed.
For instance, friends of mine adopted a young stray cat 7 or 8 years ago but had the cat declawed because they have two little kids. The mother was afraid the girls would be attacked by the cat. However they took the cat in, had him declawed and neutered. Today that cat is extremely pampered and probably would not be alive if the family did not take him in.
And that is the main point which so many people on this thread are missing. I don't like declawing myself, my cat still has her claws. But the shelters are full and some of them are putting animals to sleep because they cannot find them homes.
I for one, rather see a cat declawed and to find a home then to be put to sleep.
For those who are comparing declawing a cat to cutting human fingers off at the knuckle, that's not an accurate comparison at all. Basically what's getting removed from the cat is just the claw up to where it hinges at the end of each toe. So it's more like simply surgically removing a nail. I know some people who've had toe nails surgically removed for good due to chronic ingrown toenail issues. They didn't feel a thing during the process and after it all healed up, they don't have any ongoing pains or suffering.
Also, those who are saying a cat needs it claws to protect itself from attacking animals, how many predators do you really think a cat's claws will stop? Sure it will stop most dogs, not a pit or equivalent though. Won't stop a hungry coyote, bobcat, mountain lion, large bird of prey, or even a raccoon. Basically claws will help a cat in the event it's dealing with a threat from another domestic type of cat, most domesticated type of dogs and humans. Other then that, claws aren't effective against hungry wildlife. Hungry wildlife will prevail every time.
Lastly, on average an outside cat has roughly half the life span compared to an indoor cat, on average. Outside cats have to deal with the possibilities of getting hit by a vehicle, getting ahold of poison such as a rodent which got poisoned and the cat gets ahold of it and eats it, thus the poison is passed on to the cat and it dies (I've had a number of friends with cats that this happened to over the years), disease they pick up from being outside, and individuals who intentionally go out and harm and/or kill cats.
In todays modern world, the only time a cat should really be an outside cat is if it's working on a farm in keeping the rodent population down, or in rural areas. Big cities and heavily populated places, cats really don't need to be an outside pet really anymore.
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I miss him but he's my dd's dog not mine and we live in a condo now with no place for him to run and my neighbors are NOT tolerant. Seriously these people need something to do besides report on how long someone parks in the guest parking lot.
