It is preoccupying my mind: whether the governor of New York state, Andrew Cuomo, will or will not sign the bill which bans declawing. It passed the state legislature and is awaiting his signature to make it law.
If it was banned statewide, it would be a massively successful moment in the journey to convince law makers to ban this evil practice nationwide. However, I am bit worried about Cuomo.
He likes dogs. His has a particularly handsome dog called Captain. There are plenty of pictures on the internet of him with his dog. There are no pictures whatsoever of him with a cat or cats.
Well there is one but it is an edited, made up picture in which he is surrounded by black cats. It was used to illustrate an article entitled: Andrew Cuomo and the curse of the third term”. The black cats signifying evil and all that guff.
He has a face which does not predispose itself to belonging to a person who likes cats, or which indicates a sensitivity towards domestic cats. Is it possible to make that judgement? I think so. Hell, you just have to rely on 70 years of life experience. It is a gut feel.
But he is a democrat. That should make him more likely to like animals. I base that thought on common sense and on a survey which was discussed on the psychologytoday.com website. Here is the critical bit written by Stanley Coren PhD., DSc, FRSC:
“It is interesting to note that those people who classify themselves as liberals are more favorable to cats (27%) than their conservative compatriots (17%). Conversely the liberals, although still strongly favoring dogs over cats (49%) have a less pronounced bias than the conservatives where 57% prefer dogs.”
It comes from his article entitled: “Do Politics Matter When it Comes to Loving Cats or Dogs?”
So there is a slight lean towards the possibility that Andrew Cuomo will sign the declawing bill based on his politics but countering that is the fact that he prefers dogs over cats. At least he has a companion animal so he likes companion animals. That’s something positive.
My gut feeling is that the outcome is on a knife edge. He was asked by the news media to comment and no comment was forthcoming. If he was committed to banning declawing he’d have said there and then that he was going to sign it. We are simply told he will review the legislation. That does not fill me with confidence.
My gut feeling is that he will not sign it and a great moment in the fight against declawing will be lost. I would be immensely happy to be proved wrong.
Update a few days later: there is a lot of talk on the internet about NY state’s desire to ban declawing. This puts pressure on Cuomo to sign it off so I am coming around to the view that he will.
