A Kardashian admitted she had her cats declawed, but wouldn’t take responsibility. People who are thinking of adopting should know declawing is mutilation and makes cats miserable.
Khloe Kardashian says she regrets having her cats declawed, admitting on her podcast this week that the kitties are “miserable” since she had them mutilated.
But she stopped short of taking responsibility, electing to blame an unnamed party for allegedly telling her it was okay to have her cats’ toes amputated at the first knuckle.
“I was really misadvised about getting my cats declawed. I’ve never owned cats before. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I feel really, really terrible that I did go in this direction,” Kardashian said.
Look, I get it. Learning stuff is, like, hard. If only someone would invent a worldwide network, an “internet” if you will, where one might access the entire sum of human knowledge with but a few keystrokes!
In the absence of such a miraculous technology, how are we to know that chopping off a cat’s toes will cause them a lifetime of pain and discomfort?
Credit: Instagram
Sarcasm aside, I’m not interested in going on at length about the Kardashians or litigating this decision online. Plenty of people are doing that. There’s really no point.
What I am concerned about is the unfortunate fact that the Kardashians have influence.
Because Kardashian isn’t taking responsibility, and she brought up her decision to declaw her cats in the context of her feelings and her regret, she is not effectively communicating why declawing is wrong, nor what it does to cats.
If you don’t know what it is, you should know declawing is mutilation. It is the amputation of your cat’s toes at the first knuckle.
It permanently changes a cat’s gait, leading to early onset arthritis. It makes simple tasks like walking and using the litter box painful.
It causes psychological problems because claws are a cat’s first and primary defense. Without them, cats feel vulnerable. That can manifest in several different ways, leading them to become fearful, or to become quick to bite because they have no other options.
Khloe Kardashian was previously caught “face tuning” her cats, meaning she applied filters to them to make them look different.
Declawing is cruel, barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. It is illegal in most of the world, and US states are finally joining civilization with laws banning the procedure. Kardashian lives in California, where it is banned, so presumably she had it done before the ban or despite it. If it’s the latter, the chances of her facing legal consequences are slim to none.
If you’re worried about protecting furniture, there are much better options, but you should also know cats have normal behaviors that don’t always align with the concept of a perfectly-kept house. Your cat will test boundaries, throw up when she’s had too much food too fast, knock things over, get into places you never thought he’d get into, cough up hairballs and more.
You will be surprised. Things will be broken.
But that’s part of the feline appeal: they’re curious, playful animals, and you have to earn their trust. Once you do, they’ll be your pals for life — and you don’t want to betray that trust by making life miserable for them.
Maggie Beer was reportedly intrigued by the idea of eating a “pussycat sandwich.”
Meet Maggie Beer, a “culinary icon” from Australia who was convinced to teach cooks at some sort of community kitchen on the promise that another chef would kill a feral cat to make her a “pussycat sandwich.”
Beer was invited to help instruct cooks who volunteer for a program feeding Australian seniors. In return, one of the cooks would show her how to prepare domestic cat meat.
That goes a long way to explaining the state of mind in a country that recently killed millions of cats by poisoning them and has pledged to exterminate all free-roaming cats because self-styled conservationists believe felines — not habitat destruction, mass industrialization, the widespread use of carcinogenic pesticides, windmills, glass buildings and all the other changes wrought by human presence — are the primary drivers of local bird and small mammal extinction.
Beer and Brown, cat eaters.
“We were talking a lot about cooking kangaroo tails and then I also told her about how one of our directors… had recently cooked us a feral cat from Kiwirrkurra,” said Sarah Brown, the CEO of Purple House, which prepares meals for Australian seniors.
“She got very excited about this and I said, ‘Well if you come to Alice Springs and do some cooking classes with us, then Bobby West will teach you how to cook a pussycat and you can have a pussycat sandwich for lunch.'”
Feeding seniors intelligent companion animals is about giving them “joy as well as sustenance,” Brown claims.
Thankfully not everyone in Australia thinks this is amusing, nor do they buy the claims that slaughtering cats will magically solve all the problems facing indigenous wildlife.
A shelter operator has received death threats amid confusion over the facts after animal welfare authorities raided a Los Angeles County shelter on Friday.
The initial news headlines were apocalyptic — more than 700 dogs and cats were found in deplorable conditions according to authorities, who said the California property where they executed a search warrant represented the most extreme animal hoarding case in history.
A day later the numbers have been revised down to a still-significant 250 dogs and 66 cats, and the owner of Rock N Pawz shelter in Los Angeles County says she and her facility have been smeared, resulting in a flood of death threats directed at her.
The story is a reminder that facts aren’t always established as quickly as we’d like them to be in the age of 24/7 news and social media, and the advent of photorealistic AI can add to confusion and stir public outrage by distorting the reality of fluid situations.
A woman holds a dog found on the Rock N Pawz property. Credit: Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control
What we know for sure is that officers from the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control executed a search warrant on the property in Lake Hughes, an unincorporated community in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, about an hour’s drive from Los Angeles proper. The investigation was prompted by repeated complaints from neighbors, who said there were overwhelming odors coming from the shelter and claimed there were regular dog fights and incessant loud barking.
A local news station, KTLA, reported authorities on site were wearing respirators with protective gear, and quoted authorities who said they did not believe it was a case of intentional neglect.
“Sometimes people try to do the right thing, and they may bite off more than they can chew,” the Department of Animal Care’s Sgt. Matthew Davoodzadeh told the station. “They end up ultimately not being able to care for the animals in a proper way.”
Authorities have not filed charges related to the case and there have been no allegations of criminal conduct.
Credit: Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control
The influx of animals has strained nearby shelters while veterinarians examine the 316 dogs and cats taken from the property.
In the meantime, shelter owner Christine D’Anda said descriptions of the property and the conditions of the animals aren’t accurate, and took to social media to complain of harassment and death threats directed at her since news of the search warrant hit the web.
The shelter operator asked people to withhold judgment until the facts are established.
On Facebook, users posted images allegedly taken from the property, while others pushed back, alleging the images are either AI creations or were taken from unrelated news stories.
The shelter’s page indicated active rescue and adoption efforts, including fundraisers and an advertised adoption event last weekend.
D’Anda said she will fight the allegations in the legal system.
“There’s nothing that I can do. I’m a very stoic person,” she said. “I’m very sad about the whole situation, and I can’t wait to go to court.”
The reaction says volumes about our society’s sense of proportionality, our collective understanding of animals, and our ability to politely disagree on topics we feel strongly about.
This hasn’t been a great week for feline PR.
Not only did two celebrities come out with bizarrely forceful anti-cat sentiments, but from their statements, they both “hate” cats because they’ve misinterpreted feline behavior.
The fallout hasn’t been good either, for the actress and rapper involved, or for the more extreme animal lovers who have responded with disproportionate rage.
The first comes from rapper Docheii, who insists cats “genuinely aren’t friendly animals.”
“yall be scratched and beat tf up by your own animals I can’t lmaoooo,” the towering intellect from Florida wrote on social media.
Cats, she asserted, “don’t wanna be domesticated.”
Presumably she got that information from the Pew Center for Feline Public Opinion, and the rest of us simply aren’t privy to the latest opinion polls among cats. And here I thought our furry friends were mostly ambivalent about anything that doesn’t involve napping, playing and eating. (I took an informal poll of Bud. He responded with a simple “Fetch me a snack, will you, human?”)
A promo shot of Doechii, real name Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon
Regardless, even if there was some way to ascertain how cats feel about a process their ancestors initiated — one that takes thousands of years to result in speciation — it’s irrelevant. The decision was made 10,000 years ago when The First Kitteh was drawn to a human settlement by the promise of rodential prey in abundance.
Modern cats have no more say in the matter than we have in our ancestors slaughtering dodos. It happened. We can’t change the past.
The actress vs the ‘pedigree bitch’
The second bit of anti-feline sentiment comes from Jessie Buckley, an Irish actress who is weirdly proud of forcing her husband to ditch his two pet cats when they began dating. She talks as if she’s been waging a personal war against the species, and her reason for disliking felines also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their behavior.
Buckley’s comments were made on a podcast late in 2025, but resurfaced this week and went viral as her Oscar buzz reached its peak. On the podcast, Buckley said one of her husband’s cats was a “pedigree model bitch” who was orchestrating a “coup” against her.
She thinks the cat had it out for her: “I’d come home and there’d just be, like, poo on my pillow.”
This is actually sad, because people who really know cats, who understand why they behave certain ways, will immediately understand that they don’t have accidents out of spite. If the cat was eliminating outside her litter box, there was a legitimate underlying problem causing her a great deal of stress.
She could have been injured, she could have been sick, or she could have been plagued by the cumulative stress brought on by the presence of a hostile woman who ludicrously saw her as competition. Our furry friends are much more perceptive than generally realized, especially when it comes to our emotional states, and Buckley’s hostility would have been immediately apparent.
Buckley with co-star Paul Mezcal, who was equally enthusiastic in his intense dislike of felines, telling an interviewer: “Yeah, f— cats!”
Alas, Buckley didn’t reluctantly ask her then-boyfriend to give up his cats. She demanded it, then did a victory lap when he complied, which makes me suspect she was merely taking the whip out for a test drive before further commitment. If he’s willing to abandon two pets, he’s almost certainly going to be a pushover when she begins to prune his friends from his life, starts dressing him the way she likes, maybe even monitors his phone. *shudder*
“It’s me or the cats,” Buckley said she told her husband. “But I won!”
Congratulations, I guess?
The rage of cat lovers
As ludicrous as it seems, the backlash may cost Buckley an Oscar. Personally I don’t keep up with the approximately 200 awards ceremonies actors hold to fete themselves annually, but apparently Buckley turned in a solid performance in a movie called Hamnet.
She was considered the front-runner for an Academy Award. Now critics are openly wondering about her chances.
As always, these sorts of statements reveal a lot more about the people involved than they do about cats. I just wish people understood the species a little better, so maybe attitudes won’t default to anger or hostility if, say, a scared cat scratches a person who corners her, or a kitty with a stomach bug pukes on the carpet.
When a toddler gets sick, we don’t respond by yelling at the kid, blaming him and chasing him off. We make sure he’s okay, give him some medicine or take him to the doctor, and clean up the mess. Cats are essentially furry little toddlers, with the same innocence as children. When we adopt them, we agree to care for them.
Both Buckley and Docheii have been hammered on social media since their comments went viral, and it’s important to address that too. They expressed opinions. That doesn’t make them “pieces of s—,” “worthless human beings,” “scum” or any of the other nasty things some people have been saying.
We can disagree with them without overreacting, even in the age of dehumanizing online conversation.
Maintain yourselves!
And honestly, it makes all of us look bad. The day Walter Palmer returned to work is forever seared into my mind. Palmer was the American dentist who infamously and illegally lured Cecil the lion out of a protected area and killed him to take his head as a trophy in 2015.
Worse, Palmer — who had a history of getting in trouble for breaking the law while hunting — killed Cecil with a bow and arrow in order to claim some meaningless hunting record for himself and bungled the point-blank kill shot his guides had lined up for him. Cecil, who was an iconic lion with a distinct mane, suffered for hours before he died.
People were understandably angry, and protesters showed up outside Palmer’s office the day he returned to work. Most of them behaved themselves. But as Palmer made his way toward the front door of his dental practice, one of the protesters let loose a blood-curdling scream and shouted “WAAAAALTER PAAAAALMER!“, vowing vengeance for Cecil.
Palmer returning to work while media and protesters crowd him.
That moment of unhinged, unregulated rage overshadowed the good intentions of every person who registered their displeasure calmly and politely — and provided ample ammunition to those who enjoy painting all animal lovers as lunatics.
Buckley and Doechii expressed opinions we don’t like, and that’s their right. The best thing we can do is explain why they’ve misinterpreted feline behavior, and show them that cats really are loving, friendly animals — it just takes a little patience and trust. I say that as the faithful servant of a cat who can be particularly prickly and a complete lovebug, depending on the circumstance.
In the meantime, celebrities who hate cats should probably take a pass on broadcasting their intense dislike and save themselves the resulting headache. Sadly, we no longer have any sense of proportionality when it comes to disagreements, and no one gets a fair shake when things are litigated via social media.
I expected something truly extravagant when a reader wrote to Slate’s advice column to say she was considering doing something “wildly elitist” involving her cat.
What could it be? I wondered. Pure gold or silver eating and drinking bowls, a la Choupette? A fashionable $600 pet stroller like the young, childless women of Tokyo favor for their felines? Feeding premium meat from the butcher exclusively to her cat?
None of the above, it turns out. The allegedly “wildly elitist” thing this woman was deliberating was simply paying a veterinarian to have dental work done on her cat, with costs estimated at between $800 and $2,000, depending on the extent of the kitty’s cavities.
To make matters even stranger, the letter writer says the cost won’t be a financial hardship for her family. Their cat is only three years old, she notes, and the family has had him since he was found on the street as a kitten.
“I guess I didn’t think that part of taking him in would entail thousands of dollars to keep him alive at this stage of the game,” she wrote. “At what point do people draw the line on what it costs to save a cat’s life?”
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The writer was essentially looking for “permission” to have the cat put down, for Slate’s advice columnist to virtually pat her on the head, say “There, there!” and agree that taking care of your own cat is “wildly elitist.”
Thankfully, Slate columnist Athena Valentine was having none of it, telling the woman seeking advice that “when you adopt an animal, you take financial responsibility.” Spending money on veterinary care when needed, Valentine noted, is “exactly what you signed up for” by adopting the little guy. A cat who, by the way, could easily live another decade at least.
“If you do not want to pay for your cat’s treatment, please surrender him to a rescue that will,” Valentine wrote. “The rescue will raise the funds you do not want to part with to pay for his teeth and will then adopt him out to a new home that understands the responsibilities of pet ownership. I also advise you to not adopt any more animals until you’re fully ready to accept the financial obligations that come with it.”
Cheers to Valentine for not taking the bait.
Do your feline overlords use their own beds?
One of the first things I bought for Bud, along with his litter box, bowls and toys, was a bed. It’s nothing extravagant, but it does look pretty comfortable.
He has never used it.
Or rather, he lounged on it a handful of times when he was a kitten, but he claimed my bed as his own. He was very clear on the new ownership situation, and generously allowed me to continue sleeping on my his bed as long as I accepted the fact that he would use me as a pillow, which he has been doing for more than a decade now.
A Newsweek story details the efforts of a woman who bought her cat a new bed, hoping he’d let her sleep at night, only for the feline overlord to drag his new bed onto her bed. Essentially, she bought him a new pillow.
Do cats ever do what we want them to? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.
A cat whose fantasy soccer team ranked 222 out of 13 million players
At The Athletic, Conor Schmidt writes about creating a fantasy football (soccer) team for his cat, and letting the little guy choose who to draft and trade by writing the names of players on a dry erase board and putting treats next to each name. The first treat his cat goes for is the one whose associated player is dealt or drafted.
He says his cat reached an astonishing world ranking of 222 out of almost 13 million players on the same platform worldwide, which means either the little dude has incredible luck, or he’s a genius who knows a lot more than he lets on.
Maybe I should register a fantasy basketball or baseball team for Buddy, smear turkey gravy next to players’ names, and see how he does.
Pain In The Bud 