Dorothy Wandruff got me onto cat parkour! She showed me a compilation of videos someone had spliced together of examples of the impressive parkour cat at work.

So what is it and what has it got to do with cat declawing? The word "parkour" comes from French "parcours du combattant" - obstacle course. The word "parcours" means "course" in English.

So, "parkour" is a derivation from the true French word. It is used to describe the people, very athletic people who like to climb over, and generally navigate through urban obstacles that the average person would never consider possible. You might have seen them on television. It takes courage, skill and strength for a person to be a "traceur" (a person who practices parkour). The French word "traceur" means to leave a trace. As indicated it started in France.

Although the human has to be pretty special to be a genuine traceur, nearly all cats can do cat parkour. What do you call a cat doing parkour?!

This is because they generally have stunning athletic abilities and those all important claws. In the videos I have seen of cat parkour 95% of the what the cats achieve is only possible because of the wonderful cat claw. They are a fantastic part of the anatomy that are so strong and adept at clinging on to anything that can be penetrated by them and that includes rendered walls.

All of the awesome climbing demonstrations of cats climbing sheer, vertical walls are on coarsely rendered walls or wooden walls. The usefulness and effectiveness of the claws are backed up by great strength, a flexible skeleton, super efficient fast twitch muscles and agility (cat anatomy).

The parkour cat should remind people who are thinking about declawing their cat of the importance of cat claws. They are completely integral to the cat's life. They are not surplus to requirements; something we can discard.

The cat package of skills is demonstrated in cat parkour. It is pure showmanship but for the cat it is all in a days work. It is like walking down the street.

Not all cats do great cat parkour. Some just got a bit too fat and lazy! But all are able to do it and the ones you see in the videos are lithe, slender, fit and youngish I suspect.

Here are two videos. I have embedded two because people remove them from YouTube and that leaves a black screen. I don't get to know about that. If one disappears, the other should still work. Enjoy.

I have one slight reservation about the parkour cat. Cats are not perfect. They make mistakes. Some fall.

From Cat Parkour to Declawing Cats