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Comment by vageli | Hacker News Reader

> I'm actually somewhat torn on this one. At face value, I fully agree. More, none of my cats have been declawed, as I just don't see the point.

> That said, I also don't buy the mutilation argument at face value. We literally castrated all of our male cats, and nobody bats an eye. Indeed, you seem to be frowned upon if you don't. Surely that is as mutilating to a male cat as losing a knuckle?

At least castration has the actual benefit of aiding in population control. I don't see any benefit to declawing and in fact it endangers outdoor cats as they can't adequately protect themselves.

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Castration is a bit of a brute force for population control. No reason we couldn't also give cats vasectomies.

For the other, are there actual numbers on what that means for cats? Feels like an appeal to emotion, as much as anything else. Outdoor cats, I would presume, are far more likely to die from a car than from anything they can protect themselves from with front claws.

And again. I actually support the idea here. I just don't know if I have strong logic to stand on. I'd call it devil's advocate, but I'm not sure that is right.

> Castration is a bit of a brute force for population control. No reason we couldn't also give cats vasectomies.

Male un-neutered cats, somewhat like some of their human un-neutered counterparts, are prone to aggressive, overly sexual, and territorial behaviour (including spraying). Likely fine on on an outdoor farm cat, but probably not what you want for a pet who lives in your house.

This feels awfully close to the argument that cats with claws cause damage. Specifically indoor cats, that will never have to defend themselves from anything.

Cats with claws absolutely do cause damage to furniture (mine is ruined). If you care about your furniture you shouldn’t have a cat.

I believe the morality laws around surgery on pets are something like “It’s ok to perform surgery on pets as long as your intent is to inflict psychological damage; so as to break their will and make the animal more domesticated, but it’s not ok if it’s purely cosmetic”.

Don’t question the laws man.

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.

Human beings don't have claws, so we invented blades. Cats don't have the luxury to invent their own adaptations.

You can train cats to not scratch on furniture and the damage is minimized if you are regularly cutting their nails. You have to provide something better to scratch on like a scratching post or cardboard, and discourage bad behavior on problem furniture. Cats do learn.

I have had cats for years. it is easy to train them not to scratch things - without resorting to throwing stuff at them.

When I have adopted senior cats who are resistant to change I have just buyild scratching posts that sit beside the couch.

Just like kids and dogs, you need to not only say NO, but to also say YES to what they can do.

If you value your couch over your cats well-being you do not deserve a cat.

A feral cat sprays in a way incomparable to a cat playing on a couch. They see another cat/dog/person/strange thing out the window and they will spray the door. You come into the house smelling like your friends dog and they spray your shoes. They spray their favorite places to sit or hang out to mark it as theirs. It is a really hard habit to break compared with scratching on furniture. It's not all that hard to train even a kitten not to be aggressive on furniture and it relies on giving them better outlets to scratch on instead, like a good scratching post and plenty of convenient cardboard scratchers, and actively discouraging bad behavior while praising good behavior. You can't really give a feral cat an outlet to spray on, they will spray everywhere they are if they are going to spray at all. It's a territorial behavior, not just rowdy play.

If you've ever had a cat, you'd known that an indoor cat is just a cat that hasn't snuck out yet. The cats I have now are indoor. Both try to slip out sometimes and one ran off for a few hours. My cats are rather small and where I live there are predators. Had we not found her, her claws could have been what kept her alive.

Failing to declaw an outdoor cat lets the cat kill more birds; cats are an invasive species that kill billions of birds per year.

It also prevents your cat from defending itself from other cats, dogs, raccoons, possum, fox, insert local critter here that will fuck up your cat, in the event your cat gets loose. You shouldn't let your cat be unsupervised killing birds, that's just irresponsible as you say.

Castration, as opposed to just a vasectomy, helps with behavioural issues as well. And it's not just "making the cat tamer", but male cats get in fights with other cats more often if not castrated.

Read: it causes measurable change and, depending how you read it, harm to the animal.

I'm sympathetic, in that without this many people would not want or be able to keep male cats. But I'm not sure I have a logical leg to stand on to say this is acceptable, but that declawing is not.

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