Neutering Your Pets

just like declawing a cat. fucking disgusting.

this was sort of brought up in the other thread about no sugar (the bees problem) but here's my logic: owning an animal at all is a form of domination and is altering its ability to live in a "natural" environment (oops, didn't watmm just decide that word needs a specific context? here it is: natural in this context means a life in which the animal is not owned by an animal of a different species). it follows pretty directly that the pet owner has already affected the pets biological processes, in that the animal is not allowed to act freely as it would like (imagine being kept in a house all your life but being able to see members of the opposite sex waltz around outside as you helplessly peered through the windows; or as your favorite food was presented in front of you but you could not access it; instead you were fed crackers [albeit, sometimes fancy or wet crackers] every day). if the pet owner is already changing the animals lifestyle in such a dramatic way, it seems to be a small step to cut their nuts off. the animal's psychological gonads have already been removed. after all, if you want to allow the animal to have a half-way natural existence, one in which it can go outside and chill out with other animals like itself, then you've just gotta chop off those nuts - or so some of the arguments in this thread go. as for declawing a cat - i have a personal anecdote. my family had three [indoor] cats when i was growing up, all of them had their front claws removed. their paws were sore for about a week, and it was sad to see, but they quickly recovered and led full, happy lives (from what i could tell). all of them lived to a ripe old age. one of them wasn't very friendly, but he was a bit of an asshole from the day we got him. they were all strays. cutting an animals claws out seems to be less offensive than cutting off their nuts, but i suppose people may be weighing the distinction on the results from the operation and not the operation itself. who knows.

tl;dr;idc; owning pets is immoral and we are all such naive little humans /troon

It really depends on the situation. I would bet absolutely anything that if you measured the happiness of my 3 dogs they would be happier than 99.9% of all stray dogs. My dogs are ridiculously lucky imo.

Another common occurence is stray cats selecting a home. In other words they turn up at some place, get fed and choose to live the rest of their lives there. I'd bet most stray cats would do that if the opportunity arose.

agree with luke, people usually have a problem with their assholness so they try to justify in different ways. both neutering and declawing and keeping a wild animal in an apartment is wrong, as wrong as colonizing natives and "teaching" them about the wonders of modernity.

my cat is neutered because she was absolutely unbearable, she is not declawed because i think it horrible and would make her a total character-deprived faggot cat, she can tear my skin off when's she's hungry and we can wrestle as almost equals with her piercing claws, my hands look like freddy krueger's face after i mess with her for a couple of minutes, it's great. i get really sad when i see her looking outside at birds she'll never have a chance to tear apart.

we exercise domination over sick people by providing them with care. nature should be allowed to kill them. society is an unnecessary interference.

for the sake of argument: you do not own a sick person, ( ) and there are applicable forms of consent, unless we're talking about schiavo style medical care

Spraying or aggression are one thing... but the REAL reason you should neuter your cat is that if you don't, he could (and likely will) father dozens of feral kittens who will grow up unloved, hungry, diseased and very possibly abused. It's a huge, huge problem and one that even most extreme animal rights/vegan type people view from a utilitarian perspective. Neuter your damned cat.

is it really dominance though ? the doctors may exercise some authority but the patients are generally getting treated willingly.

but yeah..i kinda opened it all up to the eternal ethical problem of anthropology

  On 10/3/2011 at 8:58 PM, Iain C said:

Spraying or aggression are one thing... but the REAL reason you should neuter your cat is that if you don't, he could (and likely will) father dozens of feral kittens who will grow up unloved, hungry, diseased and very possibly abused. It's a huge, huge problem and one that even most extreme animal rights/vegan type people view from a utilitarian perspective. Neuter your damned cat.

this.

i cant believe people are disgusted with people that neuter their animals.

don't complain if your house is constantly covered in animal shit/urine

I work with cats & dogs professionally. Neutering/spaying them is not a moral grey area, it's a responsibility...and I assure you the people out there opposing it are largely uninformed of its necessity. It's not just about them peeing on the furniture (which is something you can train both cats and dogs not to do pretty easily).

The cats and dogs we have today are not meant to be feral animals. They were selectively bred for thousands of years to be domesticated animals. These aren't the lions and wolves of the wild who instinctively hunt antelope. Spaying and neutering greatly cuts back on their risks of disease, improves their behavior towards people and other animals, and prevents pet overpopulation (which is the biggest reason).

If your cat ends up having a litter every year in the back yard, those kittens will likely end up in overcrowded animal shelters where they'll be euthanized or tortured by mentally deficient adolescent humans in the alleys. Animal shelters are so crowded that some of them euthanize a few dozen animals every day. Stray dogs end up used as 'bait dogs' for training in dog fighting, where they tear our all their teeth with pliers so they can't defend themselves, then pit them with bigger dogs to kill them. These animals are domesticated...bred for many, many generations to co-exist with humans as pets. They don't wander happy, fulfilled lives out on the streets...street dogs and cats' lives are usually filled with sufferring.

The other things discussed I totally disagree with for a variety of reasons. Removing a dog's voicebox is horrible, as 99% of dogs can be trained to behave themselves by a truly dedicated human. Dogs without a bark and declawed cats have no natural defenses if they end up getting lost and do have to fend for themselves in the wild. That's just sad.

  On 10/3/2011 at 8:56 PM, luke viia said:

for the sake of argument: you do not own a sick person, ( ) and there are applicable forms of consent, unless we're talking about schiavo style medical care

i have an outdoor/indoor cat. he could have/still could leave at any time by meowing at the door like he does 10 times a day, every day. he has never run away. i think it is because he likes it here. we have food, shelter, love and everything. so i don't own shit. he's my little bro. furthermore we got him from the SPCA. we couldn't afford his brother so his brother was put down after spending his life in a cage. my sisters indoor cats (well, one of them) craves the outside. she has escaped a few times. always comes back. she now doesn't really show much interest in the outside, conditioning or whatever. but she always came back, again because i reckon she enjoys the food, water, love and sleeping areas. in this instance i could see some amount of ownership. but once your form a relationship with a cat or dog (these two are from my personal experience) then the animals wants to be with you, indoor or not, and any kind of ownership pretense goes out the window. once you reach that point any amount of "domination" is purely natural, much like a mothers domination of a child or a boss to an employee.

my old cat was a farm cat that someone captured, fixed, and had declawed. it was fucked up. he had spent most of the time after that (including with me, unfortunately) living in apartments, and he would always try to dart out the door whenever anyone came over. when i got kicked out of my place i had my parents take him - they live on a pretty decent plot of land, and have an external garage for him to live in. he lived therefor about a year before he got hit by a truck and killed :( but dammit he died happy (also he was at least 18 years old at that point so a full life!), i know that much. never saw him so excited - he would go around and beat squirrels to death with his super hard paw-pads. he was a psychotic little ball of fluff.

CAT PICS

  On 10/3/2011 at 7:44 PM, luke viia said:

owning an animal at all is a form of domination and is altering its ability to live in a "natural" environment (oops, didn't watmm just decide that word needs a specific context? here it is: natural in this context means a life in which the animal is not owned by an animal of a different species).

I'm going to ignore your general point about pet ownership, and just get hung up over your use of the word "natural".

So what you say that owning an animal means that the animal can't live naturally. And you define "living naturally" as a state in which you are not owned by another animal.

Therefore, according to your own definition, you just said that owning an animal means that the animal is not unowned.

It's so they don't form no babbies when they get they fuck on.

  On 10/3/2011 at 10:52 PM, Braintree said:

It's so they don't form no babbies when they get they fuck on.

I was under the impression that neutered pets don't even get they fuck on.

  On 10/3/2011 at 10:56 PM, Root5 said:

  On 10/3/2011 at 10:52 PM, Braintree said:

It's so they don't form no babbies when they get they fuck on.

 

I was under the impression that neutered pets don't even get they fuck on.

Sometimes they do. Cats are weird.

  On 10/3/2011 at 10:46 PM, Root5 said:

  On 10/3/2011 at 7:44 PM, luke viia said:

owning an animal at all is a form of domination and is altering its ability to live in a "natural" environment (oops, didn't watmm just decide that word needs a specific context? here it is: natural in this context means a life in which the animal is not owned by an animal of a different species).

 

I'm going to ignore your general point about pet ownership, and just get hung up over your use of the word "natural".

 

So what you say that owning an animal means that the animal can't live naturally. And you define "living naturally" as a state in which you are not owned by another animal.

whan you talk about cats or dogs, naturally kinda goes out the window. both of those animals have lived in companionship with humans for so long that we have forged a symbiotic relationship with each other. studies have proven that domesticated dogs have the ability to read human facial expressions. and if you breed dogs in isolation, they will revert to wolf colouration and behaviour within five or six generations; their DNA is essentially identical to that of wolves (something that has caused researchers much puzzlement).

so; what is 'natural'? the original wolflike state, or the domesticated state?

natural is when it has claws and balls and has freedom of movement, i'd say

oh lawdy that comment there is an israel/palestine argument waiting to happen.

we'll stay on topic this time

  On 9/28/2011 at 8:37 PM, Pennywise said:

maybe ask a couple of eunuchs how happy they are? Find out if they're happy and let that guide your decision.

  On 9/28/2011 at 7:14 PM, Wall Bird said:

Also, the spraying is part of the package. If you don't want it you shouldn't get a cat.

That's like having a vasectomy or using a condom, surely if you don't want babies you should just not fuck? /s

EDIT: Keeping a cat hostage at all is unnatural and wrong if you think about it surely? Yet you wouldn't consider it in that way.

  On 10/3/2011 at 11:39 PM, kwikshot said:

  On 9/28/2011 at 7:14 PM, Wall Bird said:

Also, the spraying is part of the package. If you don't want it you shouldn't get a cat.

 

That's like having a vasectomy or using a condom, surely if you don't want babies you should just not fuck? /s

Yeah, that makes sense.

  On 10/3/2011 at 11:38 PM, baph said:

  On 9/28/2011 at 8:37 PM, Pennywise said:

maybe ask a couple of eunuchs how happy they are? Find out if they're happy and let that guide your decision.

 

well played sir. well fucking played.