Beverly Hills, home to generations of movie stars and other rich people, has declared war on songbirds. It may be part of a broader conspiracy. San Francisco, Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Los Angeles have piled on.
Woe betide anyone Beverly Hills or those other California towns who dares declaw a cat! All those places have just passed city ordinances outlawing the declawing of cats.
From what I’ve read about the fearsome debate in California, which apparently revolves around a political dispute between local communities and the state veterinarian association, not one word has been raised in defense of song birds, the leading victims of those claws.
That’s not fair. If you are at risk of death from a cat’s claws, shouldn’t you at least get your own spokesman? I realize it’s Hollywood, so maybe the birds aren’t entitled to a lawyer, but surely a publicist at least? Or somebody from PETA? (Well, maybe not PETA. I see that the president of PETA now demands that we call fish “sea kitties,” so I suspect that PETA may have a bias in favor of cats and a prejudice against birds, the largest population of wild animals on earth.)
We’ve written before about the songbird death rate caused by both pet and feral cats. Let us hasten to add that, of all the options available to ease that slaughter, declawing your pet cats should be a last resort. Far better to keep your cat indoors — with a scratching post — where coyotes, owls, cars, dogs, and other cat predators can’t get at them. Indoor cats live longer, healthier, warmer, and happier lives. Here are some other ideas.
And why doesn’t someone invent a way to simply cover cat claws with some kind of padding? Ballet dancers have them for their toes.
The downside of criminalizing cat declawing is that people who want to keep their cats indoors may decide that protecting their nice furniture — and we assume the denizens of Beverly Hills have very nice furniture — from the claws of their pets is more important than keeping the cat indoors. Being law abiding citizens they will then condemn their pets to an outdoor life and their pets will set about killing wild birds.
Of course, this may be nothing more than a ploy by those California communities to pander to the cat tourism industry. Big business, cat tourism. People are always driving half-way across the continent or flying half-way round the world just to get a fleeting glimpse of a stranger’s pet cat. Not at all like birders, who hardly ever go anywhere in search of birds. Cat tourists leave no stone unturned in the quest to see just one more pet cat.
But at least now we know the reason why, when you look at lists of the best places to go birding in the world, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood are not on the list.
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NBC and the Los Angeles Times reported the news about the ordinances, as did the Huffington Post. The quote from the PETA president came from this.
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Don’t forget to be a great citizen and shop at The Fat Finch this weekend.






Full Disclosure: Until a few weeks ago, when his time to die finally came, we had shared fifteen years of our life with a cat. Waldo wasn’t much of a hunter in his final years because his eyesight faded and he was content, as an old cat should be, to sleep in warm places. And we had him pretty well trained to stay in the front yard and out of the back yard where the bird feeders are. But he no doubt killed many birds in his younger days and we didn’t always follow our own advice of keeping him indoors. We miss him, but we’ve decided to forego further cats. Responsibility for ameliorating this human-caused slaughter of birds starts at home. Besides, our next door neighbor has upwards of ten cats so, anytime we want to hold a purring cat, we can go to her house.


Just then he spotted Bat Woman walking on the ground by the great rock and he called to her, asking for her to help him down. But Bat Woman did not want to help because she thought of herself as being very ugly and she did not like for others to look at her.
And the sunrise this morning brought hundreds more, flying right over the house. One group was accompanied by a hawk, soaring just below them, perhaps catching a ride on their wing-waves. Being cranes, they appeared utterly unconcerned about the hawk and the hawk seemed only to be interested in tagging along for a bit.








