The Bébé Report: Paws Glorious Claws!

Poor Bébé. He has the habit of falling asleep, only to discover that he lost something when he wakes up! He fell into a deep sleep and lost his precious balls! He fell into another deep sleep and lost his claws! He fell into still one more deep sleep and lost an eye! What is happening to poor Bébé?!

Fortunately, Bébé's studliness was unaffected by the loss of his balls, while the loss of his eye only served to enhance his masculine appeal. But his claws?! What is a hunky male cat without a full set of slashers?

Poor Bébé. Both front and back sets are gone. Watching him carefully balancing on the back of the sofa, without pickers to dig in and balance himself with, makes me wonder why on earth anyone would do such a thing to a cat? To save their furniture? Someone should cut off their toes and see how much they like walking around like that! Poor Bébé. He minces around when he should be stepping boldly!

I have never had one of my cats declawed, so Bébé's situation is new and odd to me. Quite a few years ago, my sister took in a Siamese cat who had been declawed on all four paws, and that was the closest I had ever come to a cat that had its paws mutilated until now. I could barely bring myself to look at Bébé's tortured feet for the first week that he was here. Finally, I did look, and it grossed me out. His toe pads appeared overly large and deformed. The glorious tufts of fur that should have been sprouting from them isn't there, either.

This is what a Persian cat foot should look like:

After a bit of a struggle, I got a picture of Bébé's foot. Like many cats who have been declawed, he doesn't like anyone touching his toes! This is Bébé's foot:

The first paw pictures belong to Attila, my cat who passed away at the end of August. You can clearly see their glorious hairiness! Poor Bébé has virtually no tufting at all. The only benefit of this situation is that Bébé tracks kitty litter around a lot less than Atilla, Genghis, or Sultan did.

If that is not enough to convince people of the evil nature of declawing, then perhaps this fact will: when you declaw a cat, you are depriving it of its primary defensive mechanism. The cat will have to find a way to compensate for that, and declawed cats quickly learn to rely on their teeth in place of their claws.

Bébé is sweet tempered, however Charlotte is not! When she was first dumped at my sister's place, she was so afraid that she attacked anyone who got too close to her, biting them in the face whenever possible. My sister loves Siamese cats with the same fervor that I love Persian ones, but even she very nearly gave up on Charlotte. Fortunately she persevered, and won Charlotte's trust. But you still have to be very careful not to piss that cat off, upon pain of being bitten.

If Charlotte still had her claws, she'd still be a cantankerous cat - she is a Siamese, after all. She'd probably feel less defenseless and vulnerable, though. She certainly would bite less, and use her claws instead.

So, is it worth it? To save your sofa, you put your cat through the physical pain of having the tips of their toes amputated - a pain that can endure or recur throughout the cat's entire lifetime, and end up with an easily freaked-out, biting mess? And then, after you did this to a loving, trusting animal, you blame the cat for being difficult and dump it on someone else (if the pet is lucky!)?

Claws are sexy! Claws are macho! If you don't like them, then don't get a cat!

Other Bébé news:

Late last week, I came home to find Bébé's cone abandoned in the middle of the floor, with no sign of Bébé anywhere! As I tore around the apartment searching for him, all sorts of possible scenarios ran through my mind. Foremost among them was the possibility that he had been stolen. Believe it or not, there is an underground market in stolen purebred animals. In my general area quite a number of purebreds have been snatched from backyards, and in one case in a nearby city, a woman came home to find her house broken into and her two purebreds gone. Nothing else was taken. Only the cats and their carriers were missing. So, even though very few people even know that Bébé is staying with me, I panicked.

The picture above is only a recreation of the horrific moment. I'd like to draw your attention to one thing, however. The cone in the picture is a special extra-wide cone that is useful for flat-faced pets. Regular cones can be problematic when it comes to breeds like Persians.

Back to the story. I eventually found Bébé taking a snooze behind the sofa. He hadn't pulled out any of the staples over his missing eye, so all was well. I put his cone back on him, and he's been good about leaving it on ever since.

He is, after all, a very good cat. His owner must have been nuts to dump him.

Here are pictures of Bébé relaxing:

Here are videos of him doing his cone-cleaning thing:

All photos and videos are my own