Declaw your cat, go to jail for 6 months

Guess what lunacy is back in play in Trenton? The legislation that would criminalize declawing a cat. The proposal was just approved by a committee Thursday and states, "The most popular method of declawing, onychectomy, involves amputating the last bone of each toe on a cat's paw with a scalpel, guillotine or laser." The bill's sponsor Sen. Troy Singleton feels it is animal cruelty and abusive. "Declawing a cat is a cruel practice that more often than not is done for the sake of convenience rather than necessity."

Yet veterinarians say the procedure has evolve in recent years to be not so painful and far less invasive. They point out many people would like to adopt a cat from a shelter but only if they can declaw it to protect their furniture, babies, other family members and even other pets. They say if you ban declawing adoptions will drop.

Considering somewhere between 19 to 46 percent of cats living as pets in America are declawed (according to the Humane Society of the U.S.), obviously those veterinarians are right. If somewhere between 1 in 5 to nearly half of these cats were declawed, some of those families chose that as a condition of having a cat. You take that option away from them it doesn't take a genius to realize many cats will go unadopted. Then what becomes of them? They will be euthanized.

So ask yourself what's more cruel? Declawing and having a happy home, or killing? And these guys talk about animal cruelty? Ironic.

Read the bill for yourself here. It calls for a fine of up to $1,000, a civil penalty up to $2,000 and the possibility of 6 months in jail. Ridiculous.

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