Photo: ©Jill Posener, 'Lucy 2007'
Berkeley did the right thing last night when the City Council voted unanimously to enact a ban on declawing cats - unless it is for therapeutic medical reasons to save the cat - in the City of Berkeley. We didn't come away with as strong a statement on 'punishment' as we would have liked. To allay the hysteria whipped up by a strange assortment of bedfellows, the procedure could be charged as an 'infraction' instead of a misdemeanor. It was a tiny victory for the small band of angry pinched face opponents who looked as if they wished it were 1968 again and they were undergrads facing down the forces of oppression on the UC Berkeley campus.
The lone representative from the CVMA (California Veterinary Medical Association which leads the lobbying efforts against declaw bans) looked as if he really is tired of getting dressed in the same rumpled suit every day to give the same tired speech about why vets should continue to be allowed to cut the toes off cats. He also looked a little uncomfortable when one of his allies exhorted Council to beware that we could be restricting the rights of women to safe abortion if we passed a cat declaw ban. With a syrupy voice this fellow Humane Commissioner had most of the audience staring in disbelief as she spoke of 'women over a certain age' remembering what it was like to be denied control of our own bodies.
Another opponent spat out the words 'cat rights' when mixing her metaphors - there is a big difference between animal rights and animal welfare. As a feminist who really did put herself on the battle lines in the 70's for 'A Womans Right To Choose' this cheap, sleazy attempt to taint animal welfare advocates as 'anti-choice' is one of the reasons I will work as hard as it takes to shut them down and shut them up.
Yesterday, in emails circulating around our small northern California city (just over 100,000), people like me were described as 'animal rights fascist extremists' and there was talk of tearing families apart as vets and cat owners were thrown in jail and would never be able to get a job again, that 3 strikes laws could mean a cat declawing could land someone in Pelican Bay.
Here's the thing - cats & dogs - they have no rights. Under California they are called 'property'. If you find an animal and keep it, instead of taking it to a shelter, you have to keep it, just like a lost umbrella, for thirty days before calling it your own. How's that for rights? I'm fine being an owner. I like the responsibility.
It is because they have no rights that we - the human in this equation - must act in their best interest.
It is because they have no rights that we must take the dreadful painful decision of when to end their lives.
It is because they have no rights that we have to protect them against abuse, whether cloaked under cover of veterinary practice or practiced without veterinary care.
I am neither anti abortion nor an animal rights fascist - though being called both in one day is at least a new experience.
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