Declawing cats is generally morally wrong.

My opponent seems to miss the point entirely. "The moral dilemma we find ourselves in when considering declawing a cat is this: Does the procedure itself cause the cat enough pain to reconsider?" Apparently my opponent simply skimmed my list of health risks and side-effects. Here are some more facts, for the audience’s benefit (since my opponent has thus far failed to address them). 1.) Declawing is a serious, major surgery. The risk that anesthesia poses alone is enough to seriously reconsider such a frivolous procedure. Cats have bee known to die on the operating table. 2.) Clawing is not a behavioral problem -- it is a necessity and a natural thing for a cat to do. As I mentioned before, the toes are connected to all of the muscles in the cat’s feet- taking away it’s claws means it can’t flex those muscles anymore. 3.) There is a very serious risk that the surgery can result in shattered bones, hemorrhaging, bladder infection, and skin disorders (in addition to the risks I listed in my previous round). 4.) According to Warren Eckstein, a world-renowned pet behaviorist, "X-rays of the bone structure of Kitty's legs before and after declawing show a marked difference that's caused by his having to balance himself unnaturally. Without the nails, physical stress is placed on the legs, where it wasn't intended to be." http://www.paw-rescue.org... http://www.bornfreeusa.org... http://www.declawing.com... “ ... So, declawing is an act of domestication.” Domestication and dependency are almost irrelevant. My stance is not about dependancy- it’s about the very real, very damaging pain that the animal suffers, to achieve something we already have. “ ... because the dog the *potential* to cause serious injuries to other animals and other people, my friend uses a muzzle whenever taking the dog into public places.” There is hardly a comparison between a muzzle and declawing. A muzzle is not a surgery. A muzzle does not pose any health risks. A dog cannot DIE because of a muzzle. Has your friend permanently removed the dog’s teeth? No? Then there is no comparison. “Likewise, cats have the *potential* to do harm to both people and animals and they do. “ A responsible pet owner obtains a pet with this in mind. Anything with teeth will bite. If you do not want to be scratched or bitten, then don’t get a cat. “What the result is is a better relationshipbetween pet owner and cat because the cat simply does not cause any more problems with its claws.” Actually, the pet/owner relationship can be strained by this decision. During the (extremely painful) recovery period, the cat has to continue to walk around as normal, and continue to use his litter box. The sand (as sand often does) will sometimes get caught between his toes. On a normal kitty foot, this is not a problem, but during the recovery process, this can be extremely painful for a cat. Imagine amputating your fingers, and having to rub sand in the wounds every time you went had to go to the bathroom. To a cat, this is some very severe negative reinforcement. The cat can become so traumatized, that he seeks other, softer (less painful) places to defecate: Such as closets, rugs, and it’s owner’s clothes. Now the cat/owner relationship is much worse off than it was from the beginning. “And while my opponent argues that cats do not scratch without provocation, I personally have been scratched a number of times throughout my life by different cats and I have never provoked them in any way to deserve to have my eyes swiped at or my arms scratched and hands bitten.” Anyone who truly believes that cats attack without provocation clearly doesn’t know enough about cats. Because of the vagueness of my opponent’s anecdote, we will never know what truly happened. Was the cat in question feeling threatened?Was it injured, or scared? Was my opponent staring it in the eyes (a move often seen as a challenge in nature)? Was the cat sick? Was the cat a first-time mother, protecting her newborn kittens? Or perhaps the cat was merely an overly playful kitten? (Clearly it isn’t his fault that he has poor motor skills.) Perhaps my opponent knows so little about cats that he honestly doesn’t consider forcefully ripping a cat’s claws out as “provocation”. “People like my opponent are unwilling to take the necessary steps to protect others from their animals: they will not muzzle their dogs and they will not declaw their cats. They would rather pawn the responsibility off on their animals to exercise trained control over their behavior, sadly forgetting that these animals are equipped to take the lives of other animals and injure people whenever they choose.” If people like my opponent took the time and energy to train their pets, rather than simply ripping out their teeth and claws, they would find that animals can exercise a hell of a lot more self-control than they give them credit for. My opponent isn’t “domesticating” the domestic feline. He is shirking responsibility for the personality of his pet. My opponent is no different from an abusive parent, chopping his children’s fingers off for coloring on the walls- and then he has the nerve to call others “permissive” for not displaying such frivolous cruelty. “Leave the processes of domestication up to the INDIVIDUAL pet owner because the individual pet owner is the one who must live with their pets and be responsible for their pet's behaviors.”Being responsible means properly training your pet. It does NOT mean chopping it’s fingers off, needlessly mutilating it, and ripping out not only it's primary means of survival, but a necessary part of it's anatomy. I urge the audience to ask themselves- would this argument apply to human children? No? That is not because they are human. It is because both humans and animals can feel pain. The only notable difference between an animal and a human child is that a child can say "no". Finally, I’d like to point out that if my opponent were unfortunate enough to live in a myriad of other countries- Namely, the UK, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France, Germany, Bosnia, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Belgium, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Yugoslavia, or Israel -he would have most likely had his cat(s) confiscated, and gone to jail for animal cruelty. http://www.declawing.com... http://www.declawing.com... http://www.catsinternational.org... “Declawing fits the dictionary definition of mutilation to a tee. Words such as deform, disfigure, disjoint, and dismember all apply to this surgery.” (Dr. Dodman goes on to describe the acute and long-term suffering that results from this procedure.)