<p>if you want a pet that stays in the house and doesn’t ever go outside - why not just get a cardboard cut out?
my pets are part of my family and I would never dream of forcing them to stay indoors 24/7
<a href=“http://www.declawing.com”>http://www.declawing.com</a>
</p>
<p>ek, my cats hunt for Fancy Feast and Eukanuba, sleep almost 24/7, and poop in a box filled with man-made material. Do they belong outside? They have no business outdoors. The chickadee family that made their nest next to my front porch is very grateful that I keep my cats indoors. My neighbors are grateful that my cats are not pooping in their veggie garden.</p>
<p>The dog, OTOH, is a shepherd, and it would be a cruelty to keep a large dog like him who needs plenty of exercise confined indoors. He roams the fenced horse acre and enjoys his life. I feel very sorry for the large dogs who live in Belltown condos and have never seen a patch of grass in their lives. </p>
<p>My grandpa used to say, “A woman and a cat are for the house, a man and a dog are for the yard” :)</p>
<p>I understand the reasoning for indoor pets- but I just don’t agree with it.
( I also don’t agree with those who have multiple great danes, in a small city lot and keep them crated during the day)</p>
<p>My grandpa used to say, "A woman and a cat are for the house, a man and a dog are for the yard
nooffense to grandpa- but ugh.</p>
<p>Eh? You think declawing is cruel but you don’t mind sending your cats out to be eaten by coyotes, ran over by cars, tortured by 13-year-old boys, or whatever else might be out there?</p>
<p>I don’t understand how people think removing a cat’s claws is cruel and inhumane but removing a cat’s testicles is just fine and should be promoted. Both are performed for exactly the same reason… namely to make a domesticated animal more domesticated.</p>
<p>Yes ‘fixing’ the cat also means it can’t reproduce, but a house cat can’t do that anyway… it takes two to tango. But, of course, more often ‘fixing’ it is performed to control the cat’s hormone levels and, in turn, control its behavior (spraying, aggressive behavior, etc.)</p>
<p>To each his own on the inside/outside issue. My vet told me recently that our new 2 year old adult cat would live longer if I kept her indoors. She loves to be outside in our yard hunting gophers, etc. She rarely catches anything. She is always in at night and is probably in/out about 50/50. I just couldn’t see forcing her to stay in all the time, particularly when she was adopted to us as a young adult.</p>
<p>It’s funny, rocketman, in Germany (one of those countries where they don’t think it’s ok to alter your animals in any way) people were shocked that our dog was neutered. Try explaining “he was cryptorchid” in German!</p>
<p>At the no-kill cat shelter in California where we volunteered, the cats who had been declawed were always more easily adoptable. Although the staff officially frowned on the practice, they always pointed out the declawed cats to prospective adoptive families!</p>
<p>I just think you have to do what’s necessary for your animals to make sure you can all live together. We live with the scratches, wounds and ruined furniture and screens, the mess of cat boxes, the food, picking up dog feces, the fleas, ticks, and expensive vet and training bills. Some of us (like me) have to take allergy medication every day and use an inhaler just to keep my pets. </p>
<p>What I don’t like is the PETA police slapping labels of “animal cruelty” or “mutilation” on well-meaning pet owners for having to find solutions to be able to keep their animals. Nobody needs sanctimonious people judging you when you are faced with a crisis.</p>
<p>You think declawing is cruel but you don’t mind sending your cats out to be eaten by coyotes, ran over by cars, tortured by 13-year-old boys, or whatever else might be out there?</p>
<p>I expect some people also think that beating their kids is necessary to " teach them right and wrong".</p>
<p>My cats didn’t claw the furniture, one cat did claw the front door a bit, but we sanded it out and trimmed her claws.
My 15 yr old lab, did more damage to the furniture than the cats did. ( she chewed on handles when she was a puppy- despite that bitter apple stuff- had to put pepper oil on them- so I suppose I should have pulled her teeth?)</p>
<p>Our cats also lived to 21 and 20 years old, dying within a few years of each other ( the older cat with the help of the vet- albeit she had , had sub-q fluids for three or four years, that she hated but it kept her alive- deforming her however, would have negatively affected her health)</p>
<p>We don’t have coyotes in Seattle, but we do have cars, * and * thirteen year old boys. However, cats are very car savvy, our " momma kitty" would cross a busy intersection and wait for us while we went to vote. However, she was impatient and meowed loud enough for us to hear inside. After we communicated to her that we didn’t want her crossing the street, she waited at the corner-.</p>
<p>She also ran our section of the street. Lying in the middle of the sidewalk, so passerby couldn’t miss her, but dogs had to go way around.It was pretty hilarious, even in her last years, she would sit up and glare at the dogs who were 20X larger- made them * very nervous*</p>
<p>Boys in our area, don’t generally go in for cat torture, that wouldn’t be one of my concerns, and I have to say if I did live in an area where children were so deviant that I feared them, it wouldn’t matter whether I had a cat or not.</p>
<p>I grew up in a family that had many different cats through the years, none of which was declawed. Early in my married life, my H and I got a kitten and she was the first cat I had ever seen who clawed at absolutely EVERYthing. We tried scratching posts, and no luck. We were living in a furnished apartment at the time and made the decision to have her declawed, otherwise, we would not have been able to keep her. She had the operation and when she came home was a little quiet for about half a day then was back to her normal playful self. She never seemed to suffer any ill-effects or pain. All of our cats have always been indoor cats so she never had to worry about protecting herself outside. She lived to the ripe old age of 19.</p>
<p>EK, do not forget that outdoor cats who are allowed to roam around the neighborhood create a huge nightmare for the neighborhood gardeners. Just ask anyone who had to remove soil contaminated with cat excrement from their garden beds. Cat feces are pure poison for plants.</p>
<p>BunsenBurner, You note that cat feces are pure poison for plants, but we should also note that it can be dangerous for people too because it is likely to carry toxoplasmosis, which can give anyone a flu-like illness and can be especially dangerous for pregnant women, people undergoing chemotherapy, and others.</p>
<p>Our cat was approximately 1 year when we declawed her (front only). Because we live in a place where coyotes love to snack on pets, she had to live indoors pretty exclusively anyway. No choice on that one. She destroyed a leather sofa and was generally kind of feral (we got her from the pound at age 4 months). She eventually settled down. One thing I will say is that it’s very important to find the right doctor who knows how to perform the procedure. I’ve heard horror stories from people who had their animals worked on by unskilled hacks.</p>
<p>we have many cats in the neighborhood- Ive posted about our neighbors cat, that takes up residence with my daughter when she is home( and somehow he knows when she is home, cause he doesn’t come around much otherwise)
He is tricky cause I don’t know how he gets in, but I find him on the laundry or under the table.
When our cats were alive, no other cats came into our yard, but now we get an occasional curious feline.
I do admit that they are probably attracted by the wildlife garden, but as I am also growing an inpenetrable hedgerow, I am not as concerned as I could be about the birds. I do keep a closer eye at nesting time, but the crows are also so aggressive, I haven’t even seen a raccoon looking at the neighbors chickens.
( oddly enough, I haven’t noticed any feline scat in the garden and I am out digging every day- I don’t know where they go)</p>