We had a terrible experience with our cat Milo, when he recently developed a lower urinary tract infection and had to be admitted to stay 2 nights in a local vet clinic while he underwent surgery and monitoring for this common cat health problem. After seeing how terrified he was at clinic and then worrying whether he would live or not because he refused to eat anything for a week after we got him home and had to be forcibly fed water to keep him hydrated, we simply could not bring ourselves to consider idea of declawing no matter how stressful his clawing behavior was.

Milo is part of our family. God gave him all parts he has for a reason and declawing to us is tantamount to saying he is less important than any other member of our family; something that we couldn't bring ourselves to think.

Pets count on us to look after their best interests. When we take on responsibility of owning a pet we make what should be a statement of promise to protect them, nuture them and ensure that they are looked after. If you are considering declawing as a way to deal with your cats clawing behavior, I would urge you to please try some less invasive methods first before you resort to such a drastic measure. Why risk potential side-effects and trauma that can accompany any surgical procedure if there are clearly other, less invasive ways of dealing with this problem?

The Risks To Owners

The potential for consumer fraud is also an issue. Clones tend to be ordered by people who are grieving loss of a much-loved pet and who may have unrealistically high expectations of their clones. Although they share identical genetic profiles, clones do not always resemble originals because coat patterns are not strictly genetically determined. Personalities and behavior patterns are even less predictable on basis of genetics alone. All personalities are products of some basic genetics, and environment in which animal is raised and, since a particular environment can never be perfectly recreated (there's always a random element) personalities will, most likely, be different as well in any clone. "Consumers are likely under impression that a clone is a carbon copy. We believe they are being misled," AAVS policy analyst Crystal Miller-Spiegel said.

David Magnus, director of Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics, spoke more bluntly. "People are not getting what they think they're getting," Magnus said. "This is a $50,000 rip-off."

There is certainly a war of words beginning between cloning businesses and AAVS. It's likely to become a more contentious issue as there's potentially a lot of money to be made (at $50,000 per kitten) and companies may see AAVS's concerns as hurting those potential profits. It's going to be a case of "Watch This Space".

Conclusion

Personally, however, cloning is one option I'm not in favor of but it might be for you if you're looking at replacing a pet that's died. As I mentioned above, clone may look identical to your lost companion but personality will likely be different. That's not to say personality will be better or worse, just different. Look at it this way - how many sets of identical twins have same personalities despite having same genetic make-up and being raised in same environment? There are always random factors involved. Every personality is unique and passes by this way only once.

If you find yourself in a position where you would consider cloning to be an option that will help you cope with death of your cat, you should do some background reading first. The National Geographic have a news item on pet cloning and some people's reaction to it.