USA: Millions Of Cats Killed, Millions Of Cats Declawed; The Culture Of Convenience And The Lack Of Respect For Life

Approximately 1.5 - 2.5 million shelter animals are killed (“euthanized”*) in the United States annually. These numbers represent a decrease from 15 million killed in 1970 and 3.4 million in 2013. However, the truth is that we will never know the exact numbers because shelters are generally not obligated to keep a record of the animals they kill.

While animals are killed at troubling rates at shelters across the country with little to no transparency, among others, justified by the inability to find homes, breeders continue to produce new animals. It is estimated that there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the United States where over 2 million puppies are bred each year. Breeding for profit adds to the already high number of available animals.

Killing and discarding while breeding new animals, however, is not the only animal-related moral challenges we are facing in this country. We also seem to have a problem with accepting the physical realities of animals, e.g. that cats have claws and dogs are animals that bark. Therefore, we declaw cats, debark dogs, cut parts of their ears and tails off (“docking and cropping”), and somehow think that this is perfectly normal behavior.

Declawing, Mutilation That Is Outlawed In Many Countries

It is estimated that approximately 95.6 million cats are kept as pets in the U.S.A. An estimated 20 - 25 percent (approximately 19.1 – 23.9 million) is believed to have been declawed. However, the actual numbers may be higher. According to a CBS report, 32 percent of surveyed pet owners stated that they had their cats declawed (approximately 30.5 million). Again, there is no way of knowing the exact numbers. What is known is that the most common arguments for declawing are: protection of furniture and “if it were not for declawing, more animals would end up in shelters and subsequently, be killed.”

Declawing has been outlawed (or has never been a viable option) in many countries around the world. Even though there is an overwhelming consensus that the practice is painful and cruel, declawing is to-date widely practiced in the U.S. Besides the U.S., Canada is the only known country where declawing is similarly commonly practiced.

Ten Or More Amputations Performed At Once—Minimally Painful?

Many pet parents believe that declawing is “merely” a procedure similar to removing the nails from one’s toes. However, declawing (onychectomy) is much more than “just” removing the nails from the nail bed. It is an amputation of the end bones of each toe.** Meaning, when a cat is declawed, ten or more (see polydactyl cats)—not one—amputation is performed on the animal at once.

Onychectomy is a procedure, if it were performed on a human being, it would be comparable to cutting off the last joint of each finger. Please keep in mind here that the animal must walk on her/his toes shortly after the procedure. It requires little imagination to envision what it would feel like when 10 or more amputations were performed on a body when a) all of the amputations went “as planned” and b) in case they “didn’t go as planned.”

Besides the initial pain and suffering associated with declawing, there are also other long-time side-effects. Even if the procure is “successful,” by declawing, the animal’s physiology is changed for life.

Playing Down Cruelty And The Culture of Convenience

There are two major reasons why declawing is so widely practiced in the U.S. The first reason is the
culture of convenience. We Americans love our conveniences. It is so much more convenient to take a cat to a vet and get it declawed than to figure out respectful ways to coexist with the animal. However, convenience is not the only reason why declawing is so common. The second reason is the lack of education. Many cat parents don’t know just how cruel this procedure is. If cat parents were properly informed by medical professionals, many more would opt against the procedure. People who adopt pets generally have good intentions. They adopt animals because they love them, not because they want to inflict pain and suffering on animals.

Pro-declawing veterinarians have been down-playing the cruelty associated with declawing. This includes The American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP). AAFP recently took a “strong position against declawing.“ However, only after having failed to recognize that declawing is cruelty and therefore, should have been opposed all along.

Veterinarians who perform the procedure claim that cats heal very quickly and that relatively little pain is associated with the procedure. The pain can allegedly be reasonably managed by painkillers. At the Porter Pet Hospital, for example, young cats don’t just heal after undergoing the amputations, they “breeze through recovery.”

According to pro-declawing narratives, veterinarians are working with their customers to ensure that all other alternatives are weighed in before considering declawing. Any American who has ever been to a doctor/vet knows that such a notion has little to do with reality. When was the last time you went to a doctor and were given the time to exchange enough information to come to an educated conclusion? Additionally, there are technically no “alternatives” to declawing because declawing is cruelty and subsequently cannot be an option in a civilized society. However, there are, naturally, ways to coexist with a cat in a respectful manner but those are not “alternatives.” They are viable options in civilized societies.

The pro-declawing attitudes of many U.S. veterinarians, however, are somewhat understandable. There is too much profit to be made in the pet industry. Even a rather underestimated price of $100 per cat/declawing—a bargain, given the amount of pain and suffering that is caused to the animal–makes declawing a billion-dollar industry in the U.S. Many veterinarians naturally don’t want to miss out on those profits.

Hope—Many Veterinarians Refusing To Perform The Procedure

In spite of the troubling status-quo, there is hope for America’s cats. More and more veterinarians are refusing to perform the procedure and more and more Americans are speaking out against it.

Several cities in California and Denver (CO) have passed legislation and made declawing illegal. Anti-declawing legislation has also been introduced in several state legislatures such as in New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, and Rhode Island.

It is only a matter of time until we catch up with other developed countries and declawing becomes no longer an option in the United States. However, let us hope that one day we will also have reached a point as a society where we don’t need to convince each other about the “pros and cons” of inflicting pain and suffering on animals and instead, agree that cruelty toward animals can never be an option.

*The killing of animals at shelters is often referred to as euthanasia. However, euthanasia occurs when the purpose of killing is to relieve severe pain and suffering. The mass killing of hundreds and thousands of animals does not meet the definition of euthanasia.

** Declawing is generally performed on the front toes only.

Sexual Misconduct, Religion, And Culture

No boy was born to disrespect, objectify, or mistreat women. Sexist behavior is generally a taught and learned behavior. We know who is learning the behavior. However, who is teaching it?

Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose

We have recently been seeing an increase in powerful males being exposed and taken down in public due to various forms of sexual misconduct. The fact that some men in power are paying for the horrific things they have done to countless women is a development that we can welcome. However, for every Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, or Charlie Rose that we expose, there are countless women who have been violated; countless new Harvey Weinsteins are emerging, and countless more women are being violated as we speak.

If we want to put an end to misogyny in the long-term, we need to examine what led to its wide-spread status in the first place.

Mistreatment Of Women, A Recent History

Much of the conduct we consider unacceptable today was not recognized as a problem in the "free world" until recently. For example, marital rape was not even a concept, given that it was a woman's duty to serve her husband by making her body available to him at all times. Subsequently, many U.S. states had marital rape exemptions in their books until recently. The Violence Against Women Act was only passed in 1994 and was left to expire during the recent government shutdown. 

In other "free world" countries such as Germany, raping one's wife became punishable under the law in 1997. Similarly, until the end of the 70s, it was the legal duty of married women in Germany to "run the household." Women could only work outside of the home if they had the permission of their husbands. Women could not open a bank account without the input of a male until 1962 in Germany. Following suit with good old traditions, conservative lawmakers in the USA, to-date, are working hard to limit the choices of women and deny them critical access to health care and birth control.

Agriculture, Hoarding, And Sexual Control

Let us now discuss how women ended up being the primary targets of sexual oppression.

The main purpose of sexuality is reproducing, release of tension, and pleasure.  Let us repeat release of tension and pleasure here. Sexuality can also function to exert power over another being; an aspect of sexuality that, by the way, humans did not "invent," but took to extremes, like no other animal on the planet.

Civilization is the reflection of a constant effort to increase reproduction while suppressing pleasure. This is because civilized societies are artificial systems that are governed by rulers. They are militarized and operate through production, consumption, exchange of goods and services, and the transfer of wealth. Unlike reproduction, pleasure and release of tension do little to benefit the rulers (unless they are involved in the process themselves, of course). The higher the number of births, the better for the rulers because of the increased opportunities for economic and military exchange. Naturally, there are exceptions to this rule. However, such exceptions, too, are generally driven by the interests of the rulers. 

Efforts to control sexuality by targeting women started early, long before Christ. Records show that sexual oppression and differential treatment of women had set foot before the first civilization known to wo/mankind, in Mesopotamia. However, the emergence of the male-dominated, monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—substantially strengthened the patriarchy.

The initial targeting of women, however, started with the introduction of agriculture. After the hunter and gatherer societies, humans began to hoard, which led to the accumulation of wealth. In order to control the distribution of wealth, it became critical to identify the father of an offspring. The most viable way to do this was to control women because one could accurately identify the mother of a new-born. Therefore, efforts were made to limit the number of partners with whom a female could have sexual intercourse. From there, history took its course. The result is a highly oppressive system that became more and more exploitative and sophisticated over time.

Sexism And Science

Oppressive systems require constant attention to survive. Narratives that de-humanize and objectify arbitrary targets help minimize the amount of interference needed to keep the system going. Scientists and other highly regarded intellectuals generally deliver the much-needed narratives to justify the status-quo, as in the case of sexism. However, sexism isn't the only construct to which scientists made major contributions. Scientists have also made major contributions to racism. They claimed that human beings can be divided into different races and that some races are inferior to the others. To-date, they also claim to have discovered biological differences between men and women, particularly, as it pertains to their brains.  What they don’t tell us is, first of all, where they are finding the non-conditioned boys and girls on which to conduct their studies. Secondly, biological study of differences between men and women is based on flawed premises that there are two clearly distinguishable sexes and that each group has somewhat identical biological sex-traits because, otherwise, they cannot be studied the way scientists claim to study them. However, today, we know that that biological sex is somewhat fluid and even if a person fits into one biological category, their levels of female/male hormones can differ. Additionally, there are persons who cannot be assigned to either category altogether, e.g. because they have a combination of biological sex traits.

However, let us give the scientists the benefit of the doubt and assume that the differences they claim are true. What exactly would that change in the way we would treat an individual boy, girl, or anyone who does not fit into the two categories?

Sexual Misconduct And Religion

Throughout centuries, the clergy has played a major role in keeping the population in line, most importantly by aiding to demonize and suppress sexuality. The Catholic Church is one of the most prominent examples for this, but certainly not the only one.

After 9/11, it has become popular to cut Islam some slack when it comes to women and the Koran. Due to the anti-Muslim sentiments that emerged in the "free world" since 9/11, everyone seemed so keen to hear how progressive Islam is. Only, interpreting Islam in a progressive manner and claiming that there is one true way to interpret Islam or any other religion, is hardly an acceptable way to correct racist backlashes, because the truth remains that there is no “right” way to interpret any religion.

Nobody is qualified to tell others how to exclusively interpret the “word” of any God, but we are able to objectively claim that Islam is a male-dominated monotheistic religion. However, all three monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have the same root and tend to encourage oppression of women.

Religion is a personal matter. Everyone has the right to believe in whatever they please or interpret a religion the way they see fit, with the only limitation being that one's freedom (of religion) stops as soon as it interferes with someone else's freedom. 

Sexism And Men

Even though males historically ended up in more powerful positions, sexism affects males negatively too. After all, the purpose of sexism is to control society as a whole, not just women. Its goal is to provide a blueprint by which everyone has to live by, to limit individuals' choices and freedoms. Like women, males have little say in what roles they get assigned: the role of the provider, warrior, the one who does not show emotions, spreads his semen, mistreats women, and the long list goes on.

Sexist narratives teach us what a stereotypical man, woman, and anyone who does not fit into the two categories, is allegedly worth, and when, what we should look like, what we should do with our bodies, who we can share it with, and how we share it. 

MeToo Movement

Regardless of contrary claims, public shaming and the MeToo movement have contributed tremendously to creating an environment that discourages sexual misconduct. In the future, predators are at least going to think twice before preying on women (and men). The year 2018 will go into history as a key year for women's liberation from sexual exploitation. However, we are going to need many more 2018s before the sickness called sexism is driven out of our hearts and minds, from our homes, workplaces, mosques, churches, and synagogues, schools, and kindergartens. 

Link to Original Publication: https://works.bepress.com/alev_akbulut/