Peircing/tattooing your pet cruel?

[Emeraldgreen]

CathyBogart, I would agree that small animals, especially tiny kittens would certainly feel the injection of a microchip and I think it would be uncomfortable for them. I was thinking more about adult cats and adult dogs. I have seen the larger gauged needles and the injections themselves and the adult cats and dogs did very well with it. However, I would not want to put a smaller animal or baby animal through that and would wait until they were full grown.
I hope that in the near future they will be able to create even smaller microchips than the ones they have today so even the small guys can be chipped without any pain.
The tattooed daisy applied by the tattoo artist would surely differentiate his dog from another if someone stole it but it wouldn't help get his dog home if it was lost unless he also had it tattooed with a number or had it microchipped.

Catlady777- I don't know, maybe the needles are smaller here in Canada?!? I used to help out at a vet clinic through help with a shelter and witnessed lots of microchipping and while the needles were larger they weren't alarming and I'm a huge softie when it comes to animals. I'd be the first one to worry about that but witnessing so many of them get the quick injection, and as mentioned without even flinching. The majority were larger dogs though so perhaps my view is skewed and I'm thinking mostly of that. It was quite a few years ago.
I'm fairly certain that the clinics in Canadian provinces (the western ones at least) do have records of all the tattoo codes in a book that is provided I think by the BCVMA (b.c. vet. medical assoc.) so if a cat is brought in by someone who found it wandering around on the streets of Vancouver, and it had a tattoo from Edmonton, they'd be able to look it up, call the clinic and then call the family. We managed to get a few animals home that had tattooes from out of province but had moved to B.C. It's an awesome system and one that I hope the States adopts because it's really effective. Microchipping does seem to be the more popular choice these days but in the meantime, the tattooes work great.