If you’re a cat, in New York, they can’t cut off your claws anymore.

But they can still cut off your balls.

Which, presuming cats are like humans, cats don’t like.

If cats are like humans, I figure Tom would like to stay Tom, and if he has to undergo any sort of surgical mutilation to satisfy the whims of the humans in whose house he craps, he probably would choose to forego the claws in order to save the balls.

But this presumes that cats are subject to the white, heterosexual notion of gender forced upon the world by colonialist Europeans – namely that the options are male and female and that the immutable choice is made by biology at the moment of conception. Though this hateful paradigm has been shown to be a lie told by bigots in order to oppress women and people of color and especially women people of color, it may still be believed by cats.

Cat’s don’t go to public school, watch the news or get advanced degrees, where the lie of gender is laid bare.

But back to the balls.

If cats have not yet caught on to the progressive understanding of the innate inferiority of maleness, they probably value their balls. They probably see the widespread removal of their balls as some sort of attack upon their species and dignity. I mean, if animals have rights, shouldn’t they have the right to keep their gonads? Do domesticated cats see their feral cousins as freedom fighters, swaggering about with full scrotums, howling and marking and reproducing as they will?

Can this injustice long endure?

Will future Democratic presidential candidates be disqualified because 150 years before their ancestors had cut the balls off cats?

Will statues of Bob Barker one day be pulled down on college campuses and village squares?

Will America one day wake up to the savagery of all this snipping and clipping?

I suspect the cats hope so.

How simple life is for cats. Lying about, licking themselves, killing every creature they find and strewing their victims’ body parts about. It would be a perfect life, if only they could retain their testes.

Gender and reproduction are so different for humans. Given continued permissiveness, some American women still allow themselves to be brood mares for the patriarchy, not only producing the very beings who disproportionately cause global warming, but even giving life to white male children, some of whom will not be gay or transgender and, consequently, of great risk to the planet and underprivileged communities.

American progressives are embracing the chemical castration of boys who play with Barbies or color with pastels, in order to allow for their chosen gender to express itself at a later time, after extensive counseling from woke psychologists.

By the way, my chosen pronouns are (f—k/off).

But cats are not this enlightened – the oppression of tabbies by Siamese (Thailandese?) is well documented, for example – and these ignorant beasts would probably prefer to keep their tender bits intact.

Which illustrates the way government works when it sets out to help you.

It protects your claws when you’re concerned about your balls. No matter how little you may care about claws, or how much you may care about balls, the government knows what’s best. It cares about its priorities, not yours.

It does what it wants to do, not what you want done. And then it wants you to thank it. To kneel before its governor and legislature and their almighty wisdom.

New York cats have just learned that.

New York people learned it a long time ago.