Getting a cat

[fmxda]

[ QUOTE ]
actually, declawing is illegal in most of Europe and a bunch of other countries:

England
Scotland
Wales
Italy
France
Germany
Austria
Switzerland
Norway
Sweden
Netherlands
Northern Ireland
Ireland
Denmark
Finland
Slovenia
Portugal
Belgium
Brazil
Australia
New Zealand
Yugoslavia
Japan

Here (Belgium) it's classified as animal torture.
just a fyi.

[/ QUOTE ]
I can tell you without looking it up that capital punishment is illegal in most, if not all of those countries, and yet no one thinks it really matters when debating the legality of the death penalty.

[Doc]

Dean,

1. I always tell my clients that declawing is a a personal decision. I don't pansy around it, you are amputating the final bone on the toe and the nail. Untreated, it IS a damn painful procedure. However, if your vet is fairly progressive, the pain can be well managed. I use nerve blocks and an opoid during surgery, and a NSAID for post surgical pain. With this protocol, pain seems to be well managed. The most common complication after a declaw is infection, witch is usually easily treated with antibiotics. In my experience, the main risk factors for chronic pain after a declaw is advanced age and obesity. With a young kitten, it is usually bouncing off the walls again 2 days post surgery.

2. Breeding cats is a BAD idea. Cats act completly nuts when they are in heat (ready to be bred). I've had at least 5 cats presented to me for horrible seizures or neurological problems and the cat was simply in heat. Cats are induced ovulators, meaning they stay in heat until they are bred.

3. I am not a fan of covered litterboxes. They do reduce the odor to people but they hold the odor in with the litterbox. Again, anything you do to make a litterbox less pleasant means a higher probablility of eliination problems. If you are cleaning the box and changing the litter as you should, odor should not be an issue.

Doc

[curtains]

cats are awesome !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who cares about furniture!!!!!!!!!!!

[firstyearclay]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
my cats are perfectly happy despite being declawed. It just means you have to keep them indoors which is fine by me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you guys had long talks about this?

I'm sure there are girls that live happy lives after having their clits cut off, doesn't mean its necessary.

[/ QUOTE ]

This post is ridiculous and unnecessary.

fyc

[Ignignokt]

Just remember that if you do declaw, you must:

1. Never let the cat outside.

2. Microchip the cat and give it a bright collar with contact info so that if it DOES get outside you can quickly recover it.

3. Set aside extra play time so that the cat gets what it misses by not having scratching posts.

4. Declaw any other cats that come into your home. (This ought to be fun for you if you ever want to move in with/marry someone with a cat).

5. Keep the cat until death. Inside. With extra play time. And no domestic partners who won't allow their cats to be declawed.


...or maybe you should just make the effort to TRAIN the damn cat, instead of treating it as an object that can be modified to suit your desires. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

If you MUST have a declawed cat, you can actually make a positive difference by adopting an already-declawed cat.

[Los Feliz Slim]

Chiming in:

- I am anti-declawing. Seems really mean to me. I don't think cats are aware they've been spayed, but I'm sure they're aware the ends of their fingers have been removed. I clip my cats nails once a week, just a little trim so they can't destroy the couch too badly.

- Get two cats, preferably siblings. Will make it easier for them when you're gone.

- I clean our cats' litter box every day. They drop some HUGE logs in there.

- Every cat expert I've ever talked to recommends the high-end food instead of Cat Chow or something. We recently switched to Innova from Wellness.

- They love their water fountain and I don't have to refill it very often, and it has a filter built in.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]

Just remember that if you do declaw, you must:

1. Never let the cat outside.

[/ QUOTE ]


not true. we had three declawed cats when I was a kid and they would all go outside and did fine.

Two of them were very good tree-climbers even without their front claws and one was an especially good mouser and would bring us 'presents' right to our window while we were eating dinner.


Maybe never letting them outside is true in some neighborhoods. But not where I was. It just wasn't a big deal for them to associate with other cats or run around with no front-claws.

[Gordon Scott]

[ QUOTE ]
No one "owns" a cat.

[/ QUOTE ]

[hoff21]

Anyone familiar with the self-cleaning litter boxes?

www.littermaid.com - I heard these often break?

www.litter-robot.com - I know nothing about this one and just found it in a google search

[Ignignokt]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Just remember that if you do declaw, you must:

1. Never let the cat outside.

[/ QUOTE ]


not true. we had three declawed cats when I was a kid and they would all go outside and did fine.

Two of them were very good tree-climbers even without their front claws and one was an especially good mouser and would bring us 'presents' right to our window while we were eating dinner.

[/ QUOTE ]

What you really mean to say was that your cats were very lucky.

Seriously. A longtime 2+2er surely must see that.