Poster by Ruth
This article was inspired by the brave people who have come forward and confessed how guilty they feel at having had their cats declawed and say they will never put another cat through such a cruel and unnecessary operation.
Yes, they are partly responsible for having this done but most of them did not do it out of unkindness, they did it simply because they didn’t know declawing is major surgery and that it often has terrible physical and mental consequences for the cat.
To those of us living in countries where declawing has never been popular, the very thought of declawing, even if it was ‘only’ the removal of the claws, fills us with shock and horror. To us claws are and always have been a beautiful and essential part of a cat, in fact the very essence of the cat. Those who don’t accept that cats come with claws simply don’t have cats in their homes.
But to those living where it has been an acceptable part of the culture for many decades now, because veterinarians have (and many still do) recommended it as if it’s a routine operation just like neutering is, it comes as a huge shock to find out that declawing is wrongly named as it is in reality de-toeing.
Most people tend to trust professionals such as doctors and vets and naturally think if vets declaw cats, then it can’t be so bad as surely they took an oath to help animals, not to harm them.
But some of these vets advertise neuter/declaw packages for kittens, some clients are asked when booking in their kitten for neutering if they would like him declawed too. Many of those clients would never have thought of having their kitten declawed, so those clinics are actively encouraging it! Some give discount coupons on declawing as if it’s a good thing, come on don’t miss this bargain!
So a supposedly last resort for very serious scratching behaviour is routinely done to little kittens which could so easily have kept their toe ends and been trained to use a scratching post. Those kittens could have lived healthy fulfilled lives with no danger of the many mental and physical problems which can and often do arise from declawing. But they had the misfortune to be born in a country where many of the very people trained to care for them, mutilate them daily instead, giving the excuse that those cats would lose their homes otherwise.
We know by the many declawed cats abandoned or relinquished to Rescue Shelters that this is untrue and that the real reason is the huge amount of money made by declaw vets from this legalised abuse.
Thankfully the truth is spreading now and true cat lovers know this premeditated abuse of cats is no longer acceptable.
