Lawmakers, both in Oregon and elsewhere, have a desire to make the world a better place. Good for them. Unfortunately, sometimes that impulse leads them to places better left untouched.

So it is with House Bill 3494, which would make it illegal under most circumstances to declaw a cat or devocalize a dog. The measure has been approved by the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate’s Committee on Human Services and Childhood. We understand why the bill was introduced, but we think it should be up to pet owners and their veterinarians to decide what to do and not the state.

The two surgical procedures are highly controversial and far less well accepted than they were even a decade ago.

Cat declawing involves removing not only the cat’s nails, but the bone they grow out of. In fact, their claws are a part of that bone, not an add-on, as they are in humans. There are a variety of ways to declaw cats, meanwhile, from a precise and expensive operation that heals quickly and is largely pain- free to the more common method of removing the bone in a cat’s digits to the first knuckle. The latter is painful and takes weeks to heal.

Only about 25 percent of cats in this country are declawed, and the number is declining.

As for devocalizing dogs, it involves cutting a dog’s vocal cords. The dog is not “debarked”; instead what was a robust bark becomes a whisper.

We see little reason for lawmakers to proceed with HB 3494 and an amendment in the Senate that would restrict the practices even further. Both the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say neither procedure should be performed except under the most dire circumstances, and the number of surgeries for them is dwindling. We’ll be glad to see them go, but making them illegal simply will impel some pet owners to find other means, maybe euthanasia, of dealing with pets with problems.