Declawed Cats The Imperfect Love

Declawed Cats -- The Imperfect Love. Some people, maybe most people who declaw cats would say that they love their cat. I have just been informed by a friend of mine in America that a rescue center insisted that their cats were declawed by the new "owners" to stop the cats catching birds! I can see the argument but we really must decide to accept our fellow creatures as they are and stop customizing them. Particularly in this way. Declawing is a surgical procedure that can cause problems both psychological and physical.

The title to this post is declawed cats - the imperfect love because declawing cats is a kind of conditional love or worse. We love the cat on condition that the cat is not a true cat but a customized cat, in the same way we customize a car, for instance. And we know that the only true love is unconditional love. A form of love in which we accept the other as they are unconditionally. How can we say we love our cat if it is conditional on taking off the tips of the toes of the cat? We don't say to our human partners (before living with them), Oh, I am not sure about your tidiness, I'll have to insist that you live in the back room and stay there. Or, I think you're a bit clumsy so you'll have to let me use all the machinery, you can't touch anything. How would that go down? And that isn't taking off the tips of the fingers of our partner either!

Obviously we see cats as inferior animals even if we do love them. This perceived inferiority allows us, we think, to do as we please with cats (anyway for some of us it does). We should, I say, see cats as equals and feeling, sensing animals. Claws are a very big part of a cat's life. To take them away is damaging to the cat and not a sign that we love the cat.

You could argue that it is an assault by us on the cat. If that view was taken then the action is the opposite to a sign of affection and love. It is worse than conditional love it is a form of hate! And if it is not hate it is fear (see fear of cats).

See more on declawing cats:

Helmi Flick on declawing cats

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