There have been quite a few articles lately about declawing (and here), but I just had to write one more. This is not to upset the wonderful Americans who are anti-declaw, it’s simply another attempt to help educate the pro-declaws. Cats claws are no big deal in the UK, so why are they such a big deal to so many people in the USA?
We all know that cats come with claws, so if a person doesn’t like it that cats have claws, why do they have a cat as a pet? It’s not compulsory to have a cat and it shouldn’t be an option to have a cat adapted for convenience sake.
True cat lovers love every part of their cat, including their claws. They are not lethal weapons to be looked upon with horror, they are a beautiful and necessary part of a cat.
Take two scenarios:
1. We get a new kitten in England, he has sharp little claws and hasn’t learned ‘claw manners’ yet so we get little scratches from him.
So what, there are far more hurts in life than a few scratches!
What do we do? We buy him a scratching post and teach him how to use it. When he comes along to scratch our feet or our furniture we gently lift him to his scratching post and show him how to use it. We praise him when he does, using his name a lot ‘Good boy Stripey’ He soon learns how satisfying it is to stretch up his scratching post for a good ‘work out’. We can, if we want to, trim the sharp ends off his claws but it’s not really necessary, we’ve had many kittens in our home and the scratching stage soon passes without interfering with the claws nature gave him.
2. Someone gets a new kitten in the USA, he has sharp little claws, they get a few scratches and immediately start trimming his claws because ‘everyone’ does it. Yes, I know in the USA cats are mostly kept indoors and don’t have access to trees and fences to help with their manicures, so I accept that kittens need to learn to have their claws trimmed, because it will be for life. But hopefully the kitten will be provided with a scratching post too for exercising his muscles and for the sheer pleasure of enjoying his claws, as is his right.
OK, but what about the people who see those tiny sharp claws as a threat, who without even trying to trim his claws and/or teach the kitten claw manners, arrange for him to be declawed! That little kitten’s essential toe ends and claws will be amputated and leave him disabled for life.
How can that be right?
Yes declawing vets encourage this major surgery and the AVMA condone it. In fact, they give totally the wrong idea when they say:
‘Cats with claws may pose increased risks of injury and morbidity for certain owners’ (proposed AVMA declaw policy statement)
The message they are conveying is:
‘CATS WITH CLAWS….oooh shock, horror, they are nasty dangerous things that need to be got rid of’. How do they think we manage in countries where declawing is banned? Well, we do manage and we manage nicely by accepting the fact that cats come with claws.
There are not two options ….. cats with claws and cats without claws. There should be no second option, cats are born with claws because they need them, they are part of a cat! Everyone needs to accept that fact.
If you don’t like claws, then don’t have a cat, it’s as simple as that!
They never reply because there is no answer. People are the same all the world over, we cope with cats with claws, yet they can’t, it doesn’t make sense. They know cats have claws so why on earth get a cat if they don’t like it!
They might as well say they can’t cope with any natural thing in life, as in this poster.
The truth is it’s far too easy to get a cat declawed and it shouldn’t be!
Thanks Dorothy, it seems to be the posters that help in the stop declawing battle. It astounded me being asked so many times on facebook if people could share them, now the Paw Project vets are using some of them too.
I always put the links on facebook, to all PoC articles about declawing, whoever has written them, hoping to bring more visitors here, I think some come but don’t often comment, yet they share the posters.
So I made my ‘declawing cats is cruel’ album public and keep adding to it.
What a happy day it will be when I can delete the lot when declawing is banned 🙂
lol cool sister will be hot hot hot that day 😉
You are obviously a great cat caretaker Ru. You provide a scratching post, don’t mind a few scratches yourself and you keep your cat safe yet stimulated and active.
Why can’t everyone in the USA do the same?
If we had coyotes in the UK we wouldn’t be able to let our cats go out alone but we certainly would never ever have had them declawed even when it was legal here.
Ruth I could not agree more! I’ve always thought this yet no pro declawing American has ever replied when its come up in a debate. I wish someone would. Perhaps they know theres no answer, no believable, logical answer anyway?? What a debate that would be I do wish someone would come on and tell me why they can’t cope with cats claws and we can.
I have never heard of a vet declawing a cat because the cat’s owner has diabetes and I presume the vet says that the cat presents a health problem to the diabetic owner. I find that very peculiar as you state. It seems like another feeble excuse to de-claw another cat. People like to make excuses and fabricate reasons to de-claw their cats.
What baffles me is vets declawing because the owner has diabetes. To me that makes no sense or some type of autoimmune disease. It has been proven cats are great at helping people cope with illness and a clawed cat is much better at this than a declawed, crippled, hurting, manged cat who is suffering worse than their human from declawing! I just don’t get it and hate this procedure. I wish it would have never been introduced. I’d like to know the amount of money a vet gets from declawing per year vs. any other illness, check-up, or emergency. Let’s see where the money really comes from!