The Truth About Cats by Zachary "Spokker Jones" Gutierrez

The domestication of cats is similar to inviting a person over to your house and then punching them in the face the moment they enter the door. Over thousands of years we have domesticated cats and invited them into our homes. Yet in that vast amount of time we have done nothing to learn how to take care of these animals and figure out what makes them tick. Actually let me rephrase that. We do know how to take care of these animals, but for some reason we disregard all of this information and continue to feed them sub par meals, fill their litter boxes with dangerous chemicals, and remove important parts of their bodies simply because we choose to be ignorant. If cats really are an occasionally mobile piece of furniture, why don't we treat them that way? Why do we get cats if we're only going to feed them garbage? Ignorance. That's all. In this article there are wrong ways to take care of our pets and you're simply going to stop doing those things. The problem will be solved.

Okay, let's begin. The most horrific thing you can do to a cat is to get him or her declawed. Cats use their claws for many things. These include defense, scratching up furniture, and keeping the scratching post industry alive. Declawing is illegal in 23 countries as of this writing, including Germany and Japan. Unfortunately most people seem to think that when a cat gets declawed it is only their claws that are removed. Not so. You are actually removing what amounts to their fingers. The doctor usually uses a scalpel blade and clamps to perform the procedure. To avoid blood spurting, everywhere a tourniquet is placed around the cat's leg and there are fairly high odds of it pinching the sciatic nerve. This can do irreparable nerve damage. Quite often some vets don’t even use a scalpel. They cut the cat's digits off with what are basically scissors. This is surgery? More like mutilation. Laser surgery is also commonly done but vets hate doing it and it isn't any less painful. Any animal hospital that performs this procedure should be ashamed of themselves.

When cats are made to live with us in our homes this is a somewhat unnatural environment for them. However, considering coyotes, dogs, cars, disease or troublesome kids there is no doubt that keeping your cat indoors is definitely the smart thing to do. Given that, it makes good sense to help the cat live comfortably inside of the house and be an acceptable member of the family. This may mean declawing to prevent damage to the home or those living in it. Cats sure are dangerous! They'll steal the breath from a baby and murder your children and drink the last of the milk and leave the empty carton in the refrigerator. In order to help the cat live comfortably inside of the house and be an acceptable member of the family we have to remove their fingers!

So if your child keeps colouring on the walls with crayons do we chop off his fingers? Well, why not? It would certainly stop the problem, wouldn't it? No, we don't do that because with discipline and patience, children can be taught not to do things we don't want them to do. Obviously most people don't want to sit there with a spray bottle and squirt water at the cat every time he starts scratching the couch, or buy a scratching post for the cat so it can do what nature intended for it to do.

It seems that the best reason to get your cat declawed, at least from an unscrupulous vet's perspective is that it increases cash flow into their animal hospital.

Now that you have this wonderful picture of declawing let's read about a fun declawing story that will warm your heart and fill your soul with joy. There was a thread in our pet forum about a couple that decided to get their cat declawed. Why did they decide to do such a thing you ask?

Well, here it is. The baby was due in early February. Guido had grown to the size and strength of a bobcat, and had given himself quite the reputation for being a tough guy. He was the only cat I’ve ever heard about that couldn't trim his nails. Their friends had been telling them that the cat was not going to mix well with the baby. "Guido will feel threatened and attack the baby" "He doesn't know the difference between playing and fighting" "Many cases of SIDS are caused by cats sleeping on babies...it happened to a coworker's sister" "I heard cats can make infants get sick...". After much debate, Corey and Jen decided to declaw the cat. "The baby just wouldn't be safe," they said. What debate did they engage in that finally led them to base their decision on the rumors and urban legends that their friends spewed forth? If “they” said it then it must be true!

Well, you can probably figure out how the rest of the story goes, but let's press on anyway. Corey took a day off work to take the cat to the pet hospital. He dropped Guido off with the vet, and was told to pick him up in 24 hours. The whole place gave Corey bad vibes. The vet, who Corey described as an "ancient vet that only talked in whispers" especially gave Corey the creeps; so much so that Corey called Jen and told her he was having doubts about bringing the cat there. By now a few hours had passed, and it was probably too late. The next morning was Friday, and the two went to pick up Guido. When they got there, they saw Guido hopping around on three legs. His front left leg was hanging like a piece of meat. "It looks like it might be swelling a bit down there. I'll need to see him on Monday to check up on that,” whispered the ancient creepy vet.

These people picked the first vet they saw without even researching the place or the surgery they were about to make their cat undergo! Surprise surprise the cat was mangled when he comes out of the vet. I guess they didn’t see that one coming. But that's not all folks. By the time they got to the car, the swelling had doubled. By evening, there was pus. The next day they took him to a different vet, who said that the whoever declawed this cat had no idea what they were doing. The new vet gave them a bag of syringes and a bunch of antibiotics to treat the wound. They took all the precautions recommended by the second vet...newspaper litterbox, using those ridiculous lampshade things so he can't lick his wound; Jen even sewed a little sock for his bum leg. By now the vet bills topped over $1100 for the week

So Corey called me tonight and said that the skin just fell off Guido’s leg. And now he's faced with two options: 1. Amputate the leg at a cost of $1300... 2. Well, put him to sleep. IT LOOKS LIKE DECLAWING REALLY WORKED OUT HERE DIDN'T IT? You went in for a declawing and got a delegging! Great job folks. Pat yourselves on the back.

When we're not hacking off pieces of cats to serve our own selfish needs, we are feeding cats garbage to serve our own selfish needs. Cat food is ridiculously expensive these days. At 60 cents a can, raising a cat can really break the bank. Luckily there are pet food manufacturers that have my needs in mind. Because, you know, having your pet's needs in mind would just be too expensive. What does your 60 cents get you? Here is a list of acceptable sources of protein according to the Association of American Feed Control Officials. You know the organization that sets the guidelines that pet food manufacturers like to boast they meet? Yeah, this is them. Some of the items on this list come from the book Food Pets Die For by Ann Martin, and others are my own joke entries. You'd be surprised where the actual items that are present in pet food stop and where my jokes begin. Hydrolyzed hair Spray-dried animal blood Dehydrated food-waste (basically food from restaurants and grocery stores that was thrown in the garbage). Dried poultry waste. Chicken poop! Dried swine waste. Pig pee! Undried processed animal waste product. Basically all other kinds of waste and urine! Recycled soda cans. Broken Indian peace treaties. Homeless people. Unsold copies of Alanis Morrisette's last CD. Your dead dog or cat.

That last one is sort of funny isn't it? Have cats and dogs become practicing cannibals? You can bet that they have. Los Angeles alone sends 200 tons of euthanized cats and dogs to West Coast Rendering in Los Angeles every month. While pet food makers deny they use cats and dogs in food, they do not test the raw material that they purchase. Testing pet food for cat and dog DNA has come up negative because DNA breaks down during the rendering process. Heat breaks the bonds between two strands of DNA. The cells of the organism are degraded by the heat, and that liberates enzymes called DNAses that eat away the DNA. The cell destroys its own DNA when it is dying.

So how do they know there are pets in pet food? Through the magic of sodium pentobarbital. Sodium pentobarbital is used to euthanize dogs and cats in animal shelters. Since the chemical can survive the rendering process it can end up in the food our pets eat. In 1995 the Center for Veterinary Medicine tested several popular brands of cat and dog food for the presence of sodium pentobarbital. These foods tested positive, albeit in very small quantities. However, if the same amount of sodium pentobarbital was found in food intended for humans there would be an instant recall. What's ironic is that when a dog and cat ingests this chemical in small doses all their lives it's harder for the chemical to do what it's supposed to do when the animal is finally put down.

Just because they are nice, pet food makers also include essential minerals that your puppy or kitty needs to survive and live a healthy life. From the book Food Pets Die For, author Ann Martin explains this very generous act of kindness. The prime minerals that are added to pet food include zinc, iron, and copper. These minerals can, in some cases, cause serious health problems for pets, particularly if you happen to get a bag of food that has an inordinate amount of minerals added. Unfortunately it's hard to tell when or how much of this chemical stew is in each can of pet food. There is no testing done to ensure that each can of food is uniform with the others. One day they might throw some actual chicken into the rendering vat. Other days they might throw whole cats, collars, plastic bags, tags, and all.

The USDA inspects meat intended for human consumption. Meat that has been deemed unfit for human consumption may be used in pet food. Just because the pet food you buy might say "USDA Inspected" on it doesn't mean that it's any good. It may have been inspected and condemned!

Dry food is also an enigma to me. Cats are carnivores. Their teeth are designed to shred and tear off meat from bones. They are simply not designed for chewing. The dental "benefits" associated with dry food is nonsense. Dry food does nothing to clean your pet's teeth. Also, cats fed dry food are more likely to develop kidney complications. Even if a cat gets water along with their dry food they will always be more dehydrated than a cat that eats wet food. Cats evolved in the desert where water was scarce. Their thirst instinct is not as strong as that of other animals. Most of the water cats got in the wild was from what they ate, not what they drank.

So how do we know all this wonderful food is good for our pets? Animal testing of course! Just leave all that to Iams, the leader in animal nutrition. As far as I can tell all of Iam's testing seems to be based on witchcraft. I understand the need to research and test food products on animals but when the food you are testing is basically made of sawdust and pig urine what exactly do you expect to find? The goal at Iams is to figure out how cheaply they can make a pet food without technically making peoples’ pets not live anymore and making themselves a tidy profit in the bargain. We all know that cats eat meat. They are carnivores. So why are pet food companies trying to figure out how to make cat food with the least amount of meat that they can? If you were making a wholesome and nutritious cat food wouldn't you put more meat into it rather than less? In 2004 Proctor & Gamble, which owns Iams, earned 6.5 billion dollars. How much of that went to ensuring that the dogs and cats that worked for their company were given any kind of quality of life? Probably zero. The animals that they use for their testing live horrible lives. Dogs and cats are kept in cages for most of the day removed only to be experimented on. They sleep on metal grates. How much would it really cost to build a clean facility with a field for the animals to run in? How much does a blanket or a pillow for the dogs and cats to sit on cost? How much does a flat surface to put into cages cost so the animals won't get their feet caught in the grating? I don't know but it must be a lot because Proctor & Gamble apparently can't afford any of these things.

I'm all for animal experimentation. Think of the advances we make in medicine because of our animal friends. But when you're experimenting with terrible food on animals and not allowing them to do what nature intended them to do, that's just evil.

The animal rights debate will go on for years and years. On one side are companies that want to irresponsibly experiment on animals, sell cheap products, and make money off of ignorant people who have no clue what is really best for their pets. On the other side are annoying organizations like PETA that don't even want animals to be kept inside houses as pets and run around funding idiots that blow up laboratories. Unfortunately there are people like you and me, stuck in the middle. We just want companion animals to be treated decently.

I pay $19.24 for 24 cans of Wellness canned food at a local pet supply store here in Garden Grove. That comes out to about 80 cents a can. This food claims to be made with human-grade ingredients and no by-products. The chicken flavor smells so good that I wouldn't mind eating some of it. Over at Vons they sell 9 Lives cat food for about 60 cents a can. The first ingredient listed on their pet food is meat by-products. This food smells so bad that when I used to feed it to my cat it almost made me throw up. Is your companion animal really not worth that extra 20 cents a can? I guess that's up to you.

For more information on declawing visit www.declawing.org. For more information about the pet food industry please read Food Pets Die For by Ann N. Martin. For an alternative to declawing check out Softclaws. For an alternative to clay-based cat litters try Swheat Scoop, which does not contain any harmful chemicals and is biodegradable.

Editor’s note: All dollar amounts are in U.S. funds.