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New bill keeps pets out from under the needle. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
No more I Heart Mom tats for Fido.
A bill banning tattooing and piercing in companion animals has passed unanimously in the New York Senate.
Introduced by Manhattan Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, the bill came as a response to a Pennsylvania woman who was selling “gothic” cats online that she had pierced along their ears and down their spines. More outrage came just months ago, when a Brooklyn man inked his pitbull while it was undergoing surgery.
“Frankly after we read that story, we did a quick Google search and unfortunately this practice is beyond ubiquitous. Pierced dogs, pierced cats, tattooed dogs, tattooed cats, there are hundreds of pages of search results,” Ms. Rosenthal’s chief of staff, Lauren Schuster, told the Observer.
Ms. Rosenthal, who has two rescue kittens of her own—Vita and Marlowe—said in a release that these practices violate the trust between pet and owner.
“Tattooing and piercing of companion animals serves no purpose other than to satisfy the aesthetic predilections of the owner, and inflicts unnecessary pain on the animal, pain that they cannot understand or contextualize,” she said.
The bill, which is set to be signed into law by Governor Cuomo, would restrict tattooing to medical and I.D. purposes only.
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