Declaw Vets And The Dilemma Of Their Clients

By Ruth aka Kattaddorra

This article was inspired by Cal who is totally against declawing, but her excellent cat vet, even though she is against it too, will declaw cats for clients who demand it even after she has tried to educate them as to the seriousness of the surgery and the many alternatives to it….

Declawing Dilemma
Declawing Dilemma. Poster collage by Ruth aka Kattaddorra.

…My first reaction was that I wouldn’t go to a vet who declawed, not under any circumstances and I’d tell her why. But on second thoughts, supposing there was no other vet in the area, who apart from declawing was an excellent cat vet. What would I do? Could I trust a vet who breaks her oath to cause no animal to suffer?

It’s easy to say no I couldn’t, from a country where we have never declawed cats even when it was legal here, but supposing I lived in the USA or Canada?

We have to put our own cats first and very often cats get ill quickly, just as they usually recover quickly with prompt treatment. In an emergency especially we don’t want to have to travel many miles to see our vet, we are just desperate to get our cats to the person who can help them.

So would I risk upsetting my vet by challenging her about why she declaws cats? To be honest I just don’t know.

Maybe it would be better to realise that she won’t stop declawing while it’s legal even though if one vet after another started refusing to declaw, eventually there would be no vet left who agreed to do it.

Thinking about it though I don’t think that will happen because while clients threaten that it’s declaw, relinquishment or even death, vets will choose to declaw even though any caretaker who threatens that shouldn’t be allowed within 10 miles of any cat. They are not fit cat caretakers.

So it seems that reluctant declaw vets are not going to stop declawing while it’s legal, even though they know how wrong it is! Is it better to simply not challenge those vets but to keep on educating cat caretakers while working towards a ban on declawing?

Only a ban will stop the vets who are happy to declaw, the ones who push neuter/declaw packages for kittens or who advertise declawing with discount.

They are the vets to avoid more than the ones who feel pressured into declawing. They are the vets I would never entrust the care of our cats health to. I can well understand the dilemma of the cat lovers in the USA and Canada.

What do you do in those countries, does your vet declaw? Have you challenged him/her?
What would people do where declawing is banned, if it wasn’t banned and it happened in their country?

Ruth aka Kattaddorra

96 thoughts on “Declaw Vets And The Dilemma Of Their Clients”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. 95 comments! Great. At one time Ruth thought there was something wrong with the page 🙂

    It is a fine page that asks a really good question. I wonder if someone can summarise the comments 😉 ! LOL — What I mean is, what conclusions did we come to in resolving this dilemma? Or are there any? There may be no answers.

    Reply
  3. there is a mass belief that cats toes are disposable..

    Yes, over say 50 years, a culture has developed, driven by vets who have argued that declawing is acceptable, that declawing a cat is removing the “nail” and so on and the cat does not mind.

    It is a two way problem – vet and cat owner – but the primary culprit is the vet because they have allowed this to happen and fostered it through doing it uncomplainingly. When a vet like Cal’s vet says that she has to declaw because the client will go elsewhere, she has, with all the other vets, created that very problem. Therefore she can’t use it as a defense or reason to declaw, which, incidentally, perpetuates and strengthens the culture of declawing.

    Marc (I mean Babz), we agree on how to deal with the dilemma posed by Ruth. Great.

    Reply
    • There must be something wrong with my page as I don’t see a comment from Marc here? I’m sure Cal’s comment wasn’t on earlier either?
      Good points Barbara and I agree. I still can’t comprehend how ANY person trained to love animals can mutilate cats that way, surely they studied anatomy of the cat at college, even people here who don’t particularly like cats are shocked that anyone would take ‘even only’ their claws, when they hear it’s actually their toe ends they shudder.
      A culture is right and damn the person who started it, he was the reason kittens from a day old to adult cats were experimented on to ‘perfect’ declawing. I can never forget reading how a mother cat ate her day old declawed kittens, cats have emotions, I can’t bear to think of how that poor desperate mother cat felt.
      There seems to be no solution while vets pretend cats don’t mind, of course they mind, they have no say and suicide is not an option for cats.
      It’s a horrible emotive subject but if we don’t flog at it then it will go on and on and on ……I find that unbearable!

      Reply
  4. I’m not sure what all the cryptic comments are about so I’m going to ignore all that and just comment on the article which is really thought provoking for which my thanks go to Ruth. My first instinct was that I’d rush in there hot headed and give the vet a piece of my mind then slam the door on my way out having told her to shove her practice where the sun doesn’t shine, but then I thought again and this time thought that although I despise vets who declaw cats and (if circumstances were different and I lived in one of the few backward countries that still allow cats to be de-fingered) would never knowingly become a client of one who so blatantly cared nothing for the actual creatures they have taken an oath to help, if after I had used that vet for a time I found out that she offered a defingering service,if I was satisfied with the way she treated MY cat, if she was kind to him, spoke to him as well as me, stroked and petted him to calm him and understood cat illnesses, then maybe I would take my time, research for a different vet, one with moral standards, and then calmly explain why I was leaving her practice, as a protest against her making money by inflicting devastating injuries to cats otherwise healthy paws. Or maybe I would chicken out of face to face and write a letter!

    The end result would be the same though, I would no longer use her practice, but I would hope that telling her why I wouldn’t be using her again rather than losing my head and shouting all the things I really want to shout might make more of an impression on her calculating brain, if only more people would boycott these butchers in smiling women’s clothing maybe what $’s they lost in business would be more than the $’s they make by declawing.

    It’s a hard one because even after all these years of helping in the stop declawing fight I still can’t really imagine what sort of a nightmare it must be to actually live where it is done, to see the affects of declawing in the (bloody) flesh, to have to be civil to people who think it’s an OK thing to do to cats. I can’t comprehend that one person, let alone millions of people, would think chopping off toes with attached claws was anything other than gross cruelty. It’s a bit like the Emperors new clothes, someone must have said it was an acceptable thing to do and somehow that impression has spread so that now there is a mass belief that cats toes are disposable. It always astounds me that people are willing to admit to taking part in cruel things, hunting, shooting, declawing cats, dog fighting are a few examples, you’d think it would be something kept in the closet to be ashamed of rather than spoken openly about, even advertised, wouldn’t you?

    Reply

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