I am happy to report that at least one of our de-clawed cats can hold his own in a fight.

We adopted two sibling kittens in the summer of 2002. We brought them home and they acclimated themselves immediately into our family. They are wonderful pets. One little problem kept occurring: We could not get them to stop scratching the furniture. We finally reached the end of our tolerance over that when our little female kitty decided to climb the drapes in the dining room.

That’s it. We’re going to de-claw them. It was a tough call, given that we’d never done that to any of the many cats we’d owned. My mother used to call it “mutilation.”

We took them to the veterinarian. She took out the front claws. They recovered just fine.

Problem solved with the furniture-clawing.

Our two cats are quite different in personality. They’re about to turn 12. They’re in great health. Our female, Mittens, is quite shy, particularly around strangers. Our male, Socks? Another story altogether. He’s most definitely un-shy. He loves people, particularly my wife and me. He loves us so much that my poor, tormented wife hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in about, oh, 12 years. Our male kitty likes to cuddle at all hours of the night. We do not have the heart to banish him from the bedroom. Besides, if we closed the door I am quite convinced he’d beat it down.

Well, we witnessed something yesterday that validates even more our decision to de-claw our pets.

Socks went outside for his morning constitutional and encountered an intruder, another cat from the ‘hood. They confronted each other against the back fence. Then it started. Our cat pounced on the intruder and, shall we say, gave him the dickens.

We had heard from our vet that cats can defend themselves without front claws by using their back claws as weapons. To be honest, the combatants were moving so quickly I could detect precisely how our brave cat was fighting off the intruder.

Suffice to say he did. The other cat jumped the fence. Socks’s fur was bristling. He settled down quickly once he realized he had won the fight.

I felt this odd sense of pride in his ability to fend off the intruder. No blood was shed by either animal.

Still, I have to say it: That’s my boy.