Yes, declawing is a crime in Los Angeles, if it is done for non-therapeutic purposes, which accounts for 99.99% of all cases. The law came into force on 17th November 2009.
Allegedly Mission Animal Care Center were in breach of the law. This has been reported on the Paw Project Facebook site yesterday, 6th June 2013. Note: I have used the word “allegedly” to protect PoC in case something has been misrepresented.
We are told that the clinic was caught performing illegal declaw surgery by a representative from an LA City Council member and a law enforcement officer who visited the facility. It seems they were caught red handed. A straight bust.
The ordinance (the law) in question states that the crime of declawing for non-therapeutic purposes is a misdemeanor. What is a misdemeanor? It is a low level crime with sentencing to match. However, the sentencing on conviction for a standard misdemeanor in California is a maximum six-month county jail sentence and a maximum $1,000 fine1. Yet the clinic owners will only get an official warning from the city.
The interesting part of the criminal legislation that makes declawing a crime (Ordinance No: 180986) is that the following people are guilty of the crime on conviction:
- the person or persons performing the surgery;
- the person or persons who assisted;
- the person or persons who “procured” the surgery – this means the cat’s owner or anyone who assisted the owner in procuring the surgery or who, for example, paid for the surgery. It covers a wide range of people, potentially.
On the basis that the allegation is true, what the hell happened to the cat’s owner? It appears that he or she has not been mentioned. Potentially, everyone at the vet’s clinic plus the cat’s owner could have been jailed for 6 months and fined $1,000. Yet nothing. As I understand it, no one was charged with the crime of declawing.
This is a big mistake as it sends very much the wrong signal to others. I sense that enforcement of this very important ground breaking legislation is not being taken seriously enough.
Apparently neither the owner nor the clinic’s staff including the vet had heard of the law banning declawing in Los Angeles! It is impossible to believe that and, in any case, it is not a defense to a crime.
Polite message to LA officials: Well done in creating the law. Please ensure that you fully enforce it because if not the law will become an ass and quite pointless.
Note: My thanks to Ruth aka Kattaddorra for showing me the news.
Ref:
- shouselaw.com
‘It spoils life’
You are so right there Michael, even at happy times of helping cats, in the back of my mind there is always the thought of other cats suffering who we can’t help.
I can’t understand why some people are compassionate and kind yet others are cruel, will the entire human race EVER be humane? I don’t think so, do you?
I am equally bemused how people can do these things. To shoot tiny kittens with a revolver at point blank range you have to be emotionally dead or sadistic. There is no other conclusion to come to. And for a vet to take a scalpel to all the toes of a cat and chop of the last section you also have to be completely disconnected from the sensitivities of life.
In addition a person who does these things must have a low regard for animals and cats in particularly. It is disturbing and for me depressing. I am used to it but it spoils life.
I don’t know why some people think it’s OK to abuse animals, maybe they had been abused themselves as children but that should make them kinder to other living beings. Why instead when they know what pain and/or fear feel like do they inflict it on innocent creatures?
I don’t know either why otherwise compassionate vets choose to abuse cats by declawing them. They can’t pretend not to know they cause the cats pain and disablement they must have studied the anatomy of a cat so they can not plead ignorance.
I’ve puzzled over this many times, like your vet saving that kitten’s life, if she had found him a good home and the adopters wanted him declawed, would she have agreed? I’ve read about cases where kittens and cats have been rescued then the rescuers spoiling their good deed by having the cat declawed.
As you said Caroline how could any intelligent pet lover have a cat declawed and I say how could any intelligent person who trained to be a vet to care for animals, so obviously loves them, agree to perform that surgery?
It’s a horrible enough world for cats because of all the animal abusers but made even worse by those vets who legally abuse cats by declawing them.
Yes it breaks my heart too every time I hear of another kitten or cat doomed to suffer pain and disablement and that’s why I will help those of you over there against it to educate as many people as possible about the truth of this cruel surgery, until the day comes when declawing is banned worldwide.
They are most likely naive and gullible, as most of us are. Those of us who are not sensitive to the poor cat. Dogs? Perhaps they can stand being abused by their owners. Cats, on the other hand, cannot. (I do not think that either genus can.) Cats are taunted, skinned alive, abused every single day, by those who have no feeling towards them.
Ruth, this is why I still to this day stand by my vet–not wholeheartedly–because she pieced back together on an Oct31st a black kitten who was skinned alive here in Lincoln, NE by two contemptible assholes in a red pickup who were caught. That beautiful BLACK kitten lived in her office for yrs after suffering such a horrible trauma. (She took him home each night.) He represented everything wrong with this world. Why wouldn’t these sadists come to terms with the facts of their childhood? Why would they abuse a little kitten, who had done nothing to them, and was looking for help?