There is a beautiful but sad and uplifting story written by Jennifer Conrad, DVM (founder The Paw Project) on the website The Dodo.
She recalls the moment, 14 years ago, that changed her life forever and set her on the path to being a passionate anti-declawing advocate; to work tirelessly to repair the damage paws of botched declawing surgery and to educate people about the truth of cat declawing.
Jennifer Conrad is heavily involved in repairing the paws of captive wild cats in the USA. It never ceases to amaze me, and in equal measure appall me, that people who own these magnificent wild cats can decide to mutilate their paws. It is taking away a significant part of the beauty of these animals which is their athleticism because, not infrequently, they become crippled by the de-clawing operation.
One such example is the African lioness Naala. She received the benefit of paw repair surgery carried out by Jennifer Conrad and her feet were bandaged with a dark green wrap.
The bandages remained on Naala for a week. Most cats, Jennifer says don’t like anything on their paws (don’t we know it) and lionesses are no exception. However, Naala was perfectly content to have her bandages on her paws because it was if they had taken away her constant pain.
Jennifer and her associates tried to get the bandages off but she wouldn’t let them. They had to come off because if they’re left on to long they can cause injury.
The day came to remove the bandages which required sedating and anaesthetising the lioness. On that day Jennifer had a visitor, the Deputy Mayor of West Hollywood; Hernan Molina.
Jennifer must’ve had one of those Eureka moments because in her presence at that time was a declawed lioness who had suffered because of the operation and a legislator, a person who can make law and change things.
Jennifer says that she looked at Naala and at the Deputy Mayor and asked:
“Why don’t we make it illegal to declaw cats in West Hollywood?”
Declawing became illegal in West Hollywood, Los Angeles and in seven other cities in California:
| City | When Banned | Voting | Pop. of City |
| West Hollywood | 2003 | 5/0 | 35,000 |
| Santa Monica | 27/10/2009 | 6/1 | 100,000 |
| San Francisco | 3/11/2009 | 9/2 | 810,000 |
| Beverly Hills | 5/11/2009 | 5/0 | 40,000 |
| Los Angeles | 6/11/2009 | 11/0 | 4 million |
| Berkeley | 10/11/2009 | 9/0 | 125,000 |
| Culver City | 24/11/2009 | 5/0 | 39,000 |
| Burbank | 08/12/2009 | 4/1 | 100,000 |
Now it is time to extend that ban. Please let it happen. Thanks Jennifer for all the fantastic work you do for cats. You’ve removed a lot of pain from their lives.
Please read and comment on her article on The Dodo website and here…
Big declawed cats can never be safeky returned to the wild. So what happens then?
No Comment.
Ok. My brain isn’t fully functional yet. Yes she was PTS one week ago. I had her declawed 11 years ago and recently began learning of declawing painful =facts. She also has IBD which I could not get back under control. She was a sick and hurting girl and I just couldn’t justify leaving her in pain so I was h u mane and let her run over the rainbow bridge.
PTS is put to sleep.
You wrote that Maggie was euthanized last week.
That means Maggie is dead.
So true Michael!! Not that she doesn’t know what the implications are, more just helping her say it’s ok to say no. I’m being gentle and told her of the city and states that have banned it. I told her it would be great if she were the first vet to stand up in the state against it. Dee, what is PTS?
I’m so sorry.
R.I.P. sweet Maggie.