Many people declaw their cats to keep them from scratching up and tearing up furniture, drapes, and their own flesh. The problem with declawing is that it essentially rips out the fingernails of a feline, which is both painful and traumatic since it leaves a cat helpless in the wild.

That’s why many places are working on laws to ban declawing. Fortunately New Jersey has taken the lead and become the first state in America to make declawing officially illegal. For the first time in New Jersey, declawing would be considered an act of animal cruelty.

If your cat claws up your house, get scratching posts and other ways to safely channel your cat’s scratching instinct. Failing that, find a better home for your cat or just get your own fingernails ripped out first to see what it feels like.

Declawing is inhumane and needs to be stopped. Hopefully other states will follow New Jersey’s lead and ban declawing as well. Perhaps law makers should go one step further and ban thoughtless people from owning cats in the first place.

To read more about New Jersey’s ban on declawing, click here.