declawing

I have only very, very rarely come across anyone who has even heard of
Usenet.

That's the only statement you have ever made with which I agree. Wow.

Usenet is most definitely a fringe that attracts a certain
type of person.

I don't think I would say "fringe." It might just be people who are curious
enough to look around on the internet a little and find stuff like this instead
of just going to every dotcom they hear about on TV.



Candace
(take the litter out before replying by e-mail)

See my cats:
http://photos.yahoo.com/maccandace

I have only very, very rarely come across anyone who has even heard of
Usenet.

That's the only statement you have ever made with which I agree. Wow.

Usenet is most definitely a fringe that attracts a certain
type of person.

I don't think I would say "fringe." It might just be people who are curious
enough to look around on the internet a little and find stuff like this instead
of just going to every dotcom they hear about on TV.



Candace
(take the litter out before replying by e-mail)

See my cats:
http://photos.yahoo.com/maccandace

wrote in message
...
You can't be "deeply against" declawing if you justify in the same
breath, which you just did. It is not "necessary" to mutilate a cat and
cause it irreversible harm, especially when there are numerous humane
alternatives. I'm also surprised that you think a declawed cat has some
higher status that prevents it from being killed in a shelter. They are
killed in shelters on a regular basis. 80% of the declawed cats (300)
abandoned at the shelter in the following article were killed last year
because of behavior problems. That also means that 375 declawed cats
were abandoned there. That's just *one* shelter. You do the math:

http://www.southjerseynews.com/issue...y/m020103h.htm

"There's preventatives. Why a cat scratches is to sharpen its nails."
Clipping nails deters scratching, he said.

A quote from the above article, and one I have a problem with, unless I'm
terribly misinformed. I know that cats DO scratch to sharpen their nails,
but isn't it also a means of marking territory and also a means of
stretching? The man who said the above is actually the shelter director,
which is a little frightening. He makes it sound like the -only- reason a
cat would scratch is for sharpening (and for me, the logic doesn't work, as
clipping the nails makes them -less- sharp, so wouldn't a cat want to
scratch -more- after the clipping than less?).

And no, I'm not supporting declawing. Arjun's postings of articles and
whatnot did a great deal to convince me. I don't have any statistics, but I
could hazard a guess that more than half of the declawed cats we currently
have were surrendered for 'litterbox issues.' I've fostered ((*thinking*))
four declawed 'litterbox issues' cats and had all of two incidences, one
with an absolutely petrified boy who I think just didn't want to come out
from his hiding place to use the box, and the other because I apparently
didn't get the smell out from the first time. Only one of the four shows any
tendency to bite, and that so far has been more my not giving him as much
attention as he wants and right when he wants it than any result of the
declawing.

wrote in message
...
You can't be "deeply against" declawing if you justify in the same
breath, which you just did. It is not "necessary" to mutilate a cat and
cause it irreversible harm, especially when there are numerous humane
alternatives. I'm also surprised that you think a declawed cat has some
higher status that prevents it from being killed in a shelter. They are
killed in shelters on a regular basis. 80% of the declawed cats (300)
abandoned at the shelter in the following article were killed last year
because of behavior problems. That also means that 375 declawed cats
were abandoned there. That's just *one* shelter. You do the math:

http://www.southjerseynews.com/issue...y/m020103h.htm

"There's preventatives. Why a cat scratches is to sharpen its nails."
Clipping nails deters scratching, he said.

A quote from the above article, and one I have a problem with, unless I'm
terribly misinformed. I know that cats DO scratch to sharpen their nails,
but isn't it also a means of marking territory and also a means of
stretching? The man who said the above is actually the shelter director,
which is a little frightening. He makes it sound like the -only- reason a
cat would scratch is for sharpening (and for me, the logic doesn't work, as
clipping the nails makes them -less- sharp, so wouldn't a cat want to
scratch -more- after the clipping than less?).

And no, I'm not supporting declawing. Arjun's postings of articles and
whatnot did a great deal to convince me. I don't have any statistics, but I
could hazard a guess that more than half of the declawed cats we currently
have were surrendered for 'litterbox issues.' I've fostered ((*thinking*))
four declawed 'litterbox issues' cats and had all of two incidences, one
with an absolutely petrified boy who I think just didn't want to come out
from his hiding place to use the box, and the other because I apparently
didn't get the smell out from the first time. Only one of the four shows any
tendency to bite, and that so far has been more my not giving him as much
attention as he wants and right when he wants it than any result of the
declawing.

"Brandy Alexandre" wrote in message
...

Why don't you girls get a room.

Wow, that's really convincing, Brandy, what a way to get your point across
*yawn*....

Ann

--

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/bewtifulfreak

"Brandy Alexandre" wrote in message
...

Why don't you girls get a room.

Wow, that's really convincing, Brandy, what a way to get your point across
*yawn*....

Ann

--

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/bewtifulfreak

Where are your numbers? Your source on a
nationwide ban? Your articles regarding how declawing is fun for
the cat.

Karen

I can't come up with the things you asked because I don't know anything
about them.

Sorry, Brandy, but you *did* spout off about the alleged great numbers of
people who opposed this "nationwide ban''. Now you've refused to elaborate. No
one else ever heard of a nationwide ban, and doubt your statement. You seem
oddly hesitant to defend that statement now.

You've conjured garbage up in your own head and are trying
to sell it as words from me. Get a life already. You have never done
anything--ever--to warrant anyone giving you the time of day

You seem to be giving her *very much* of your day.

much less
what you keen, gibber and accuse. Jealous of YOU??? Don't make me
laugh. No... don't make me sick. I'm not the one obsessed with it.

But you can't seem to just go away.

know what I know and I'm comfortable with.

Your dearth of knowledge just continues to amaze and astound.

It's your insecurities that
you can't have the world your way that keeps these ridiculous flames
alive.

Actually, they are not ridiculous flames. Karen continues to offer a very good
argument and back it up. You don't.

Sherry

--
BrandyÂ*Â*Alexandre®

Where are your numbers? Your source on a
nationwide ban? Your articles regarding how declawing is fun for
the cat.

Karen

I can't come up with the things you asked because I don't know anything
about them.

Sorry, Brandy, but you *did* spout off about the alleged great numbers of
people who opposed this "nationwide ban''. Now you've refused to elaborate. No
one else ever heard of a nationwide ban, and doubt your statement. You seem
oddly hesitant to defend that statement now.

You've conjured garbage up in your own head and are trying
to sell it as words from me. Get a life already. You have never done
anything--ever--to warrant anyone giving you the time of day

You seem to be giving her *very much* of your day.

much less
what you keen, gibber and accuse. Jealous of YOU??? Don't make me
laugh. No... don't make me sick. I'm not the one obsessed with it.

But you can't seem to just go away.

know what I know and I'm comfortable with.

Your dearth of knowledge just continues to amaze and astound.

It's your insecurities that
you can't have the world your way that keeps these ridiculous flames
alive.

Actually, they are not ridiculous flames. Karen continues to offer a very good
argument and back it up. You don't.

Sherry

--
BrandyÂ*Â*Alexandre®

In , "Mike"
wrote:
| "Arjun Ray" wrote in message
| ...
| In , "Mike"
| wrote:
|
|| I'm asking if its more humane to kill a cat than to give it to owners
|| who would look after it but get it declawed first.

| There's no answer for this question because, as posed, it's actually
| not well formed. Specifically, why is death the alternative?
|
| Over crowded shelters. There aren't enough homes for the cats; so unless
| they want to spend the rest of their lives in a cage at a rescue centre,
| death is the only realistic alternative.

I went over this in my previous followup. Let me try again.

The point is that 'declaw or death', applied to individual cats, is an
instance of the fallacy known as "false dilemma". Merely because an
adopter who intends to declaw is turned away, does not in and of itself
imply that the particular cat will therefore spend the rest of its life
in a cage if it isn't put down. For all we know a non-declawing adopter
could walk in the door in the next five minutes.

Furthermore, it need not be "will declaw" that happens to be the reason
to reject an adopter - the *same* logic, if valid, could be applied to
any other criterion. E.g. 'convicted of animal abuse', or 'financially
incapable'. That is, rejecting a potential adopter for *any reason
whatsoever* would, by the essential structure of this argument, condemn
the cat. It will be a sad day indeed when rescuers and fosterers are
the ones held to blame for the deaths of cats, by failing to adopt them
out simply because they had standards!

The reality is that we are not dealing with certainties for *individual*
cats. We are dealing with statistical likelihoods, based on aggregates.
And once we start talking about numbers, there are two critical ones:
the proportion of declawed cats among all cats homed, and the proportion
of declawed cats among all cats surrendered to kill shelters (and, at a
first approximation, put down.)

Maybe an explicit numerical example will help explain the considerations
involved. Lest they be confused for fact, I'll stress that the numbers
are illustrative, *not* representative.

Let's assume that 10,000 cats are adopted out in some area in some year,
and of them, 10% or 1000 are declawed. Further, let 500 cats wind up
surrendered to the area's animal control facility over the same period;
and of them, let 20% turn out to be declawed. The incidence matrix will
look like this (use a fixed-width font for readability):

Surrendered:
Total No Yes
Total 10000 9500 500
Declawed: No 9000 8600 400
Yes 1000 900 100

The two critical percentages are represented in the first and third
columns (10% of all cats declawed, 20% of surrendered cats declawed).

Now, read across the rows. The percentage of non-declawed cats
surrendered is 400/9000 = 2.2%. The percentage of declawed cats
surrendered is 100/1000 = 10%. That is, declawed cats have a much
greater likelihood of being surrendered.

If we take being *surrendered* as a practically sure death sentence,
then this disparity (2.2% versus 10%) is an inevitable mathematical
consequence whenever the first critical percentage (total incidence,
e.g. 10%) is less than the second (incidence among surrenders, e.g.
20%).

There is no kill shelter I know of that does not report a substantial
proportion of declawed cats in their intake. There is no evidence that
the proportion of cats declawed in the population at large is anywhere
as large as those percentages. In other words, the real percentages,
whatever they are, are *like* the numbers above in the sense that one
proportion (total declawed) is smaller than the other (declawed among
surrenders). It necessarily follows that declawed cats suffer a greater
incidence of being surrendered than cats who are not. The mathematics
is inescapable.

Now why would you, as a responsible rescuer, subject a cat to a greater
than average chance of not *keeping* a home?

Which brings out the essence of the false dilemma above. On aggregate,
the issue is not *finding* a home. It's *keeping* a home.

In , "Mike"
wrote:
| "Arjun Ray" wrote in message
| ...
| In , "Mike"
| wrote:
|
|| I'm asking if its more humane to kill a cat than to give it to owners
|| who would look after it but get it declawed first.

| There's no answer for this question because, as posed, it's actually
| not well formed. Specifically, why is death the alternative?
|
| Over crowded shelters. There aren't enough homes for the cats; so unless
| they want to spend the rest of their lives in a cage at a rescue centre,
| death is the only realistic alternative.

I went over this in my previous followup. Let me try again.

The point is that 'declaw or death', applied to individual cats, is an
instance of the fallacy known as "false dilemma". Merely because an
adopter who intends to declaw is turned away, does not in and of itself
imply that the particular cat will therefore spend the rest of its life
in a cage if it isn't put down. For all we know a non-declawing adopter
could walk in the door in the next five minutes.

Furthermore, it need not be "will declaw" that happens to be the reason
to reject an adopter - the *same* logic, if valid, could be applied to
any other criterion. E.g. 'convicted of animal abuse', or 'financially
incapable'. That is, rejecting a potential adopter for *any reason
whatsoever* would, by the essential structure of this argument, condemn
the cat. It will be a sad day indeed when rescuers and fosterers are
the ones held to blame for the deaths of cats, by failing to adopt them
out simply because they had standards!

The reality is that we are not dealing with certainties for *individual*
cats. We are dealing with statistical likelihoods, based on aggregates.
And once we start talking about numbers, there are two critical ones:
the proportion of declawed cats among all cats homed, and the proportion
of declawed cats among all cats surrendered to kill shelters (and, at a
first approximation, put down.)

Maybe an explicit numerical example will help explain the considerations
involved. Lest they be confused for fact, I'll stress that the numbers
are illustrative, *not* representative.

Let's assume that 10,000 cats are adopted out in some area in some year,
and of them, 10% or 1000 are declawed. Further, let 500 cats wind up
surrendered to the area's animal control facility over the same period;
and of them, let 20% turn out to be declawed. The incidence matrix will
look like this (use a fixed-width font for readability):

Surrendered:
Total No Yes
Total 10000 9500 500
Declawed: No 9000 8600 400
Yes 1000 900 100

The two critical percentages are represented in the first and third
columns (10% of all cats declawed, 20% of surrendered cats declawed).

Now, read across the rows. The percentage of non-declawed cats
surrendered is 400/9000 = 2.2%. The percentage of declawed cats
surrendered is 100/1000 = 10%. That is, declawed cats have a much
greater likelihood of being surrendered.

If we take being *surrendered* as a practically sure death sentence,
then this disparity (2.2% versus 10%) is an inevitable mathematical
consequence whenever the first critical percentage (total incidence,
e.g. 10%) is less than the second (incidence among surrenders, e.g.
20%).

There is no kill shelter I know of that does not report a substantial
proportion of declawed cats in their intake. There is no evidence that
the proportion of cats declawed in the population at large is anywhere
as large as those percentages. In other words, the real percentages,
whatever they are, are *like* the numbers above in the sense that one
proportion (total declawed) is smaller than the other (declawed among
surrenders). It necessarily follows that declawed cats suffer a greater
incidence of being surrendered than cats who are not. The mathematics
is inescapable.

Now why would you, as a responsible rescuer, subject a cat to a greater
than average chance of not *keeping* a home?

Which brings out the essence of the false dilemma above. On aggregate,
the issue is not *finding* a home. It's *keeping* a home.