ASPCA are wrong about cat declawing

Here is the reason why ASPCA are wrong about declawing cats. Today, there is a tweet from City the Kitty which states that “ASPCA ultimately condones declawing and is helping declawing vets make money from this cruelty”. They want people to ask Subaru to stop donating millions to ASPCA. Subaru is the biggest contributor to ASPCA.

The tweet caught my eye. I’ve just read ASPCA’s statement on declawing cats. It starts off with an unequivocal sentence: “The ASPCA is strongly opposed to declawing cats”. A good start. But this statement is fatally qualified and undone further down their article.

The SPCA are against jurisdictions such as US states and cities banning cat declawing because they say that in rare cases the procedure might be necessary in order to prevent euthanasia.

They want declawing to be legal and a decision to declaw a cat should be based upon a discussion between the client (the cat’s owner) and the veterinarian. And they want veterinarians to inform their clients of alternative, nonsurgical methods to address destructive clawing.

They are saying exactly what the veterinarians who declawed cats say. This is exactly the defence of veterinarians when they justify maintaining cat declawing and when they object to a ban on declawing. I’ve seen transcripts of meetings on banning declawing and this what vets say.

And the ASPCA are wrong. They are very wrong. And the reason is actually pretty obvious. Veterinarians, in general (there are exceptions) do not discuss matters with their client about alternatives to declawing. Many of them actively promote declawing to make money. Some even give out bloody vouchers for discount declawing! 😢💔

You can’t trust American veterinarians to do the right thing. You can’t trust them to make cat declawing a last resort. Often, they make it the first step to take if their client comes into them and says that they don’t like their cat’s claws because they damage the furniture and they scratch grandmother or the kids.

Under these circumstances the veterinarian should actively resist declawing and tell their client that it is cruel and a mutilation of their paws and that there are alternatives which they must take. They should sit them down and take 15 minutes to explain those alternatives. They don’t do this. I don’t think they do it at all, ever, which is why millions of kittens are declawed in the USA every year.

So – I’ll say it again – the SPCA are wrong and it seems to me that they are the mouthpiece of declawing veterinarians. This goes against their animal welfare philosophy because they know, as we all know, that declawing is cruel. It is actually barbaric as described by Dr. Bruce Fogle DVM in the UK, the world’s best-known veterinarian and author.

The ASPCA conclude their article with this limp and hopeless sentence: “Veterinarians should decline to perform declawed procedures except in the rare instance where all other humane alternatives have been exhausted.”

Note the word “should”. Feeble language. Why didn’t they use the word “must”. An imperative. With their kind of language, I have to conclude that City the Kitty are correct and that ASPCA ultimately condones declawing. In which case they are shameful and an embarrassment to the animal welfare establishment.

ASPCA stands for American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. On declawing they tear up the reason for their existence.

Below are some more articles on the complications of declawing. IT IS TIME THAT IT STOPPED. IT IS A HORRIBLE ABBERATION IN VETERINARY ‘CARE’. IT IS NOT CARE AT ALL. The pictures accompanying City the Kitty’s tweet are nothing short of horrendous. It is horrible. How did American vets come to this? To reject their oath so resoundingly?