Once upon a time in our household, there was the question of whether or not to declaw Tabby. So far the “not to declaw” camp (a.k.a. mine) is winning. But once in a while (like lately when Tab’s paying a little too much attention to the carpet on the stairs) Wayne’s camp raises the issue again.
However, Tab need not worry about me doing anything to her claws other than trimming them. (Something I haven’t done in a while and why her paying attention to the carpet is posing a problem.)
The whole to declaw or not debate sprung to mind because of something I watched on a show called “The Outsiders.” I DVRd it but only got to watch a portion of it before Wayne deleted it. (Accidentally. It had been in our recordings for a while. When he went through cleaning up our list one day, he figured I must have already watched it by now.)
But the part I did see…yikes.
I love monkeys. I always thought it’d be neat to have one for a pet…until I interviewed Andrea Campbell. She set me straight really fast that capuchin monkeys are more than pets.
One lady featured on the show didn’t seem to know if her monkey was a pet or a baby. Or a pet baby. She dressed it in clothes (not only are dogs not Barbie dolls, but neither are monkeys!), took it to the park, and even pushed it around in a carriage. (I couldn’t tell if it was a baby carriage or one of those pet carriages.)
But what got me was when a kid at the park got too friendly with the monkey and it bit him. The lady said, “That’s why we had to take her teeth out.”
Say what?!?!
But, nope, I heard right. She went on to explain that the poor monkey was toothless because the woman could not teach it, nor trust it, not to bite herself or strangers.
It was clear the lady doted on her pet monkey, but to have its teeth removed? That’s not love. That’s abuse. I don’t care how she tried to justify it.