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Indoor Cats, Scratching, and the Debate over Declawing: When 3CHAPTER Normal Pet Behavior Becomes a Problem Katherine C. (Kasey) Grier and Nancy Peterson hen pet animals share to stress that they enjoy the com- mousers. The U.S. Post Office our living spaces, their panionship of pet animals in their owned what one observer called Wneeds and natural behav- homes; pointing out the complexi- “quite an army of cats” to protect iors sometimes are at odds with ties and contradictions in living the mail; postmasters in large the varying standards for house- with pet cats is intended to cities even had budgets for “cat hold appearance, sanitation, and acknowledge the historical, socially meat” (this being food for cats, not polite social life that Americans constructed, and changeable char- food from cats). Around markets have established over time. How acter of pet keeping and to encour- and stables and anywhere grain pet owners have resolved these age people involved in companion was stored to service livestock, issues provides insight into their animal welfare work to consider cats were present (Grier, in press). changing ideas about the role of why some practices can be promot- Although the majority of Ameri- animals in their households and ed or simply tolerated, while others can cats still worked for a living as suggests how much, or how little, are problematic. late as the 1940s (Jones 2003), people may actually know about some families enjoyed the compa- the biological behaviors and psy- ny of what memoirist Samuel chological needs of the creatures The History of Canby Rumford of Wilmington, they care for. This essay examines the Cat as a Pet Delaware, recalling his childhood one particular issue associated with in the 1880s, called “just plain the problem of sharing spaces: in America cats.” While cities were home to declawing pet cats as a common The domestic cat (Felis catus) many thousands of feral and solution to avoid destructive arrived in America with the first unowned cats, and even cats with scratching. This is a volatile issue permanent European settlers in owners were sometimes purely ani- and has generated much emotion- the seventeenth century. Ships car- mal workers, ample documenta- al debate. It pits loving cat owners rying immigrants and supplies tion survives of well-cherished pet who see such surgery as an act that almost always carried at least one cats and of cats who were both breaches the trust of responsible cat to kill the rats that plagued workers and well-loved compan- pet care for their feline compan- ships’ food supplies. On shore, cats ions. The Quaker diarist Elizabeth ions against loving cat owners who soon played an essential role as Sandwith Drinker cherished her see the surgery as an act that predators in the ecology of human- old cat, Puss, so much that, when strengthens their bond with their animal communities. Small busi- the cat died from a “disorder feline companions. It divides those nesses and government offices among the cats” of Philadelphia in in the animal welfare and veteri- relied on resident cats to protect 1800, she arranged a funeral for nary community as well, where their contents from rats and mice, the animal. The Rumfords had a many opinions are believed to be and, by the mid-1800s, it was even family pet cemetery with wooden the right opinion. The authors wish possible for city folk to rent good monuments for both cats and dogs 27 dating back to the 1830s. Despite life. Cities had needed them, but down Concord-way what’s kind to efforts to establish a pet-cat now the misery of half-starved feral cats.’” While conventional wisdom “fancy” with a show circuit begin- and unowned cats, and increasing, considered cats to be pets for ning in the 1870s, most cat lovers if misguided, public concern about women and little girls, there were in would have scoffed at the idea of cats as carriers of diseases, includ- fact both male and female cat lovers. buying a “purebred” cat. Pet cats ing poliomyelitis, led to new efforts Samuel Clemens, better known as were acquired from friends or to control their numbers. Whether Mark Twain, was a passionate cat neighbors or adopted as strays. At stray cat populations had increased lover (which may surprise readers of the same time that these lucky dramatically in those years, as advo- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, cats enjoyed life in the laps of fond cates of control claimed, it is true where Clemens discussed at some owners, in places like the Rum- that hundreds of thousands of cats length the trading and play value of fords’ barn, cats who lived on their were captured and killed between a dead cat among small boys). This own ingenuity “multiplied in great 1890 and 1910. was a trait he shared with his moth- numbers” (Grier, in press). In 1911 the New York Society for er, who, he recalled, succored scores Because cats were expected to the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- of strays in the 1830s and 1840s. hunt, their owners often assumed mals (SPCA) killed upwards of Once his own family was established, that they could fend somewhat for three hundred thousand cats, most- Clemens indulged his passion for themselves. Thus cats occupied an ly kittens. Philadelphia disposed of cats freely; one daughter recalled ambiguous position in the house- fifty thousand and Boston another Clemens walking around with a cat hold as somehow less tame than twenty-five thousand that same named Lazy draped around his neck dogs, and their quest for prey year. The author of the McClure’s like a stole (Grier, in press). sometimes put them in conflict magazine article that startled read- In sum, pet cats were more com- with humans. For example, where ers with those figures excoriated mon in eighteenth- and nine- households kept poultry, cats were pet owners who abandoned their teenth-century America than has a nuisance because they found cats for the summers or refused to been suggested previously. Some chicks such easy pickings. In May euthanize unwanted kittens: pet cats had real devotees who 1872 cat lover Alice Stone Black- It does not fit in with the loved them and valued them as well, who cared for a small flock at decencies of civilization that so more than mouse catchers. Even her family’s suburban house, found much living and dying should the most beloved pet cats, howev- herself marching over to her next- go on casually, in lofts and cel- er, lived lives that were much dif- door neighbor to “tell him if he did lars and drains and coal-pock- ferent from those of their modern not keep the cat shut up we should ets and vacant houses. Neither counterparts. have to kill it” (Grier, in press). does it accord with a decent For one thing, all cats lived at Eventually the problems caused humanity that so many sen- least part of their lives outdoors. by such ambiguities came to the tient and dependent creatures This was a sensible solution given attention of the animal welfare should be left so completely at the blunt realities of cat ownership: community. By the early twentieth the mercy of circumstances. even pet cats were sexually intact, century, advocates complained (in Grier, in press) expressing a range of behaviors about an apparently common prac- Throughout the nineteenth cen- (unpleasant to humans) that feline tice among city folk of turning out tury, as now, some people were seri- sex lives necessarily engendered. cats for the summer when the fam- ous cat lovers. Lydia Jackson Emer- Further, cat owners who confined ily went on vacation, or of keeping son, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s second their animals had to improvise lit- cats during the summer at the sea- wife, was one of these. Her step- terboxes with sand, wood shavings, side or country house and leaving daughter Ellen complained in an or torn newspaper. Thus, even in them behind when the family 1859 letter to her sister that the big cities, most pet cats were rou- returned to the city for the winter. family not only tolerated a black kit- tinely allowed out to wander, and Also during this time, urban pub- ten, the barn cat, two others named owners expected them to have lic health professionals in the Violet and Kitty Minot, a large black adventures, including fights with largest cities turned their attention cat, and “Aunty’s cat and all moth- other wanderers. In the early to remaking cities into orderly, er’s pensioners,” but that they 1890s, teenager John W. Gould of healthier environments with safe recently had been “much afflicted by Orange, New Jersey, was pleased water, clean streets, and regular the arrival of another cat.” Emerson when his cat Mike matured enough municipal trash pickup. In this con- himself joked that the cat came to have “his experience fighting text, the ubiquitous urban tramp from a nearby town, where she had outside. He has licked all the cat was no longer a joke or even an “met a cat who said ‘Why, haven’t Tramps but one and I think he will unpleasant yet acceptable fact of you heard? There’s a Mis’ Emerson whip that one next time” (Grier, in 28 The State of the Animals III: 2005 press). Leaving the house meant to keep their cats as indoor pets (APPMA 2003–2004). In 2002 that pet cats were exposed to infec- was the growing popularity of spay- there were 77.6 million owned cats tious diseases, injury, or death. ing and neutering.