Actually, the reason to spay and neuter goes beyond simply keeping animals from reproducing. Spaying a female reduces the chance of mammary cancers, and removes all possibility of pyorrhea, a serious infection of the uterus. Neutering males eliminates the chance of testicular cancer and some other types of cancers.
These are good points. I just wanted to add that the term for a pus-filled uterus is pyometra, not pyorrhea. -rrhea pertains to excretion in feces (like diarrhea) or discharge (like from an tooth socket). I'm not sure I've heard it used for pyometra, although I can see where it could be applicable in an open pyo with pus discharge from the vulva...
On the benefit of neutering front:
In dogs, it's been shown that spaying before the first heat virtually eliminates the chance of mammary tumors (which are one of the most common tumors in dogs and 50% of them are very aggressive, spreading rapidly to the chest, often before diagnosis.) Pyometra is a very real risk in older intact females and is very life threatening and an expensive surgery with a marked risk as these animals are quite sick when they come in, their blood values are terrible, and of course there's that lovely risk of rupturing that huge, fragile pus-filled uterus...
The males have many "intact male" problems as well. Testicular cancer, prostatic hyperplasia and cancer, perianal adenomas, perineal hernias, etc. Older male intact dogs are also quite prone to hyperplasia (thickening/growing) of the perineal glands, resulting in a rather unattractive "donut butt", and can go on to perianal adenomas...very common, can get huge, ulcerate, and are a complete shame when their prevention is so simple. Like humans, older dogs may get enlarged prostates which causes them to strain to urinate as well as defecate (getting feces up and over the prostate/squeezing by it into the pelvic canal). All this straining can weaken the muscular wall and cause perineal hernias...a horrible thing to have to have or treat and horribly painful to many of them, especially if the bladder gets flipped back and entrapped. This also makes me sad to see so many of them in these old intact male dogs for no reason.
As for declaws, I personally try to talk people out of it, showing them how to trim claws, mention soft paws, etc., but if people are set on it I have no problem declawing a cat if it will keep the cat in the home. The 2 top reasons cats are dumped in shelters or booted outside are inappropriate urination (cats acting like cats...something people here have said if you can't take, you shouldn't own a cat) and destructive clawing. I have declawed 4 paws for cats owned by AIDS patients and little old people who take weeks to heal from the scratches a well-meaning cat leaves jumping up and off their laps. I feel these people shouldn't be declined the right to give a loving home to a cat and these cats live extremely happy lives, probably better than most. Keep in mind, too, that there are many cats out there that either don't have the temperament for or don't have owners that can handle restraint for clipping nails and applying soft paws.
When I declaw a cat, their feet are locally blocked (nerve block to the paws with bupivicaine) for recovery and they are on pain medicine for the first several days. I use scalpel blades (which is much more precise in my hands), not a Rosco clipper, as I've had to "redeclaw" cats where they've left a piece of P1 in the paws and I've seen too many nicked pads with them. They have bandages on only overnight and go home the next day. They are a little tentative the first day and are perfectly fine within a couple. Now, if you have someone do a butch job and cut pads, misapply tourniquets to cause radial nerve problems, or something of the sort, I agree that is awful. I personally take great pride in my pain management, in a careful declaw through a tiny incision, and in cats that walk on their paws nearly normal the next day and normally within a couple. If I get them at 12 weeks, they don't limp at all. I hate to declaw adult cats, but if they must be declawed then I want to do it...because I know it will be done right with the least amount of discomfort possible.
As for the cats outside issue, as much as people are against declaws, that's how much I am against people letting their cats outside. The risk of hit-by-car, the risk of feline leukemia and FIV (feline AIDS), the number that come in with cat-bite abscesses, broken limbs, fleas, parasites, and wounds from who knows what... But that's another topic and another opinion.
Have I seen bits of declawed cats torn to shreds outside or declawed cats brought in dead from a mauling from dogs? Sure have. Have I seen "clawed" cats brought in for the same? Probably MORE.
So, final stance from me (sum up opinion if you will) is that I prefer not to declaw cats, but that's not a decision for me to make for others and there are instances where it is necessary given the cat and the family it lives with.
edit: To address the original issue... What that child was doing is no doubt cruel and I don't understand where the parents are on this one. It's not something I would have ever considered doing when I was 8, let alone 14. He's old enough to understand it's wrong, so there's either a major defect in his upbringing that he doesn't understand that or there's a major defect in his personality that he disregards this, much like the 3 17&18 year-old boys that broke in and beat to death an entire no-kill shelter full of cats with baseball bats because "boys will be boys". I treated the 3 of the 7 that even made it to the university still alive (one lost a leg because the bones were in so many tiny fragments there was no repairing them, one had to have a feeding tube and its jaw wired shut to heal, and one lost an eye and had multiple skull fractures) and if that's what condition those kitties were in, I can only imagine the scene they saw upon entering the shelter that morning. These boys had no remorse, "they were just cats" and the reaction by some of the people who knew the boys was appalling. "Boys will be boys."
