CLAWS ARE ESSENTIAL AND BEAUTIFUL TOO

That poster is truly fantastic as it shows exactly the toe joints which are cut or burned off by the vets who do this despicable surgery.

What a difference the healthy paw to the deformed paw.

And at the bottom a simple diagram of where to trim the cats claws instead.

Your posters are INSPIRED Ruth.

Yes claws are not only beautiful they are essential and I will never understand how it can be justifiable to remove them from any cat.
Those vets don’t give a damn for cats,that’s for sure.

Ive got myself in a knot.Ive just been and commented on another of Ruths posters and agreed its the best yet but I hadnt seen this one.
Its another that needs printing off huge for July.It says everything in pictures the other best one says it in words.
I wish I was educated man to put my words right.
Ed

This is your best poster yet Ruthy…
Every part of a cat is beautiful, and they depend on us to speak up for them so that they stay as beautiful and proud as they are…It is the way God made them, so who are we to try and change perfection for our own selfish reasons?????
Thank goodness it is banned in this cat loving country..Wake up America!!!

Sue I’m with you,these smashing posters say all there is to say and I often put links to the articles featuring them here.
I agree that claws are a beautiful part of a cat and even if they weren’t essential what right has anyone to take them away.
It’s assault and armed robbery to take something from another being by force and it’s criminal.

Ruth your posters say it all,you don’t need words underneath.

I might be speaking out of turn but I’ve got to say this,why don’t you people who use the great articles on PoC to put links to other articles write your own instead.
It’s especially a bit much putting links to other web sites when there’s everything anyone ever needs to know on PoC itself.

Cats claws ARE beautiful. The way they are designed and what they do is nothing short of miraculous.

Ruth your pictures are absolutely spot on. They show what happens explicitly and if a cat carer can see that and ignore it then they can’t possibly love their cat at all.

I also feel that the structure of a cats claws are like fingers especially where kittens are concerned; they play so much and learn so much during those early weeks. They play fight, play with toys, learn to stalk and hunt, how can anyone declaw them and just stop all that when they’ve only just learned how to use their little toes?

Anyone ‘vet’ who declaws all four paws ought to be struck off! Its bad enough to declaw the fronts but seriously there is absolutely no justification for the back ones! Cats use them to scratch an itch for Gods sake! Its torture if they can’t so quite clearly the vets are torturing them in so many ways! It makes me sick and angry to think about it.

Well done Ruth if the lazy so and so’s can’t be bothered to read then at least your diagrams are all self expanatory.

https://pictures-of-cats.org/the-damage-caused-by-a-domestic-cats-claws-is-greatly-exaggerated.html

If you cannot tolerate getting a small, shallow scratch now and then, you do not need to be living with a cat. There **may** be some who have genuine medical reasons why they cannot be scratched (though the human medical industry greatly exaggerates this, and these people are actually far more rare than MD’s would have us believe), and for those people, I would say that if they profess to love cats then they should work on their behalf to make the world a better place for them, rather than selfishly declawing one in order to keep him or her in their home. For the rest of the populace, those who simply want everything to be THEIR WAY, enjoy that bubble you are trying to seal yourself into, but don’t mutilate an innocent creature in order to seal him or her in there with you. Life includes a little scrape or scratch here and there. I hope your human kid bites you one day.

If claws weren’t an integral part of the cat they wouldn’t be born with them. Why can’t people just accept that simple fact of life?

Here’s another good article that people can print out and distribute, staple to adoption contracts, have on educational tables, or post on community bulletin boards. It’s called “Why Cats Need Claws”

“Claws are involved in almost everything a cat does during her waking hours. In the morning, she digs her claws into her scratching post and pulls against the claws’ resistance to energize and tone her upper body. During playtime, her claws snag flying toys out of the air and hold them in place. When she runs across the house and up the stairs, her claws act like cleats to provide extra traction. When she scales her kitty condo, she uses her claws like miniature mountaineering crampons that let her reach the top with ease.

A cat uses claws to scratch an itch, manipulate catnip mice, grip a narrow catwalk, hoist her body up to a high-up perch, and grab onto a chair for stability during grooming. Claws are even used in self expression; for example, a slight extension of the claws is a subtle way to say “I’m tired of being held and am ready to get down”.

In some circumstances, claws are lifesavers, enabling a cat to climb to safety or thwart an attacker.

All this and much more is lost when a cat is declawed.”

“Why Cats Need Claws” by Gary Loewenthal

I love my cats’ claws. They’re all beautiful and the ways they use them are fascinating to me. I often find that the ways cats use their claws can be awefully similar to the ways that we use our fingers. Which has made me believe that a cat’s claws are fingers and nails all blended together to make a very clever and genious retractable tool. Which can be used for defense, exercise, playing, grapping, and all sorts of other things!

Having said that, imagine if you had your fingers taken away? What kind of life would that be? Imagine that, and then make it 10 times worse, and you’ve got the life of a declawed cat. Declawing takes away a tool that the cat’s body, protection, and all else relies on. Without claws a cat cannot be a cat. And I do not understand why vets cannot see this, and why they continue to mutilate cats and remove such a unique and amazing part of a cat’s body. Claws are beautiful and any vet who declaws a cat cannot call themselves a vet.

It infuriates me when I read things like “claws taken out” and the latest one “claws extracted”, it makes me wonder if the people who write those descriptions really believe that is what happens or if they delude themselves deliberately because the truth makes them uncomfortable.
When you look at the diagram of a cat’s paw and see all of the parts that make up the whole it becomes obvious that the claw is much more than a toenail to finish off the end of the paw. In fact the claw is as much part of the paw as the pad. And I wonder if veterinarians, their technicians or even their reception staff who make appointments for declawing procedures ever think about showing clients a diagram like this and explaining what will happen to the cat. Or if their actions are more like a conman who sees a chance to make money from someone stupid and takes it.
But by saying that I am not for one second excusing cat owners (anyone who contemplates declawing must surely think that they “own” the cat) who bundle their cat into a carrier and deliver her to the surgery to have her finger ends amputated. Oh no! The buck stops with the cat carer every time and ignorance is no excuse for what amounts to surgical abuse of a cat. This diagram or umpteen thousand others plus explicit descriptions of declawing are readily available within milliseconds on a Google search.
So my conclusion is that anyone who chooses to declaw a cat deliberately chooses to maltreat that cat and so should be liable for prosecution for cruelty to an animal. Another brilliant article Ruth, thank you, you ARE making a difference.