Recently there has been a spate of comments on declawing discussions, that there is a new way to declaw cats by laser, which doesn’t involve amputating any bone. This is untrue!
One person said that she had been told that it was a wonderful new and to be recommended procedure which only lasered away the nail and nail bed.
By spreading this untruth without doing any research into it, how many cats claws has she endangered?
How many cat owners will phone their vet and book their cat in to be declawed? How many vets practices will explain that there is no new procedure? Will they explain that in a cat the nail bed is the last phalanx of the toe, the entire bone is the nail bed. It contains claw cells and if not removed the claws grow back painfully crooked. A cat’s claws grow in layers from germinal (epithelium) cells into which each claw is deeply embedded.
Describing a cat’s claws as nails is muddying the waters; it makes them sound like a human’s nails. Our nails are merely covers to protect our finger ends, they are not embedded in bone like a cat’s nails/claws. Removing a human’s nails wouldn’t affect the finger bone at all because our nails are just plates which grow from cells in the lunula (the half moon) and are anchored by skin. Unfortunately some people think that a cat’s nails are the same as a human’s and can be removed without it affecting the bone. This is untrue!
Front declawing a cat by any method is the amputation of the TEN last toe bones. Thankfully declawing the rear paws isn’t very common but it does happen and that cat suffers EIGHTEEN amputations!
I have watched The Paw Project video and I urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to watch it on Netflix if it hasn’t had a showing in your area. The film showed declawed big cats before and after their paw repair surgery and pictures of small declawed cats. Yes, it was hard to watch in places but we who are fighting this cruelty, need to see this if we can.
It also includes showing the Paw Project vets succeeding in having declawing banned in eight Californian Cities, their joy and relief at winning those bans was wonderful to see. What was horrible to watch was the vets who didn’t want the ban, arguing against it, I was shocked that those people who trained to help animals were so desperate to keep such cruel surgery legal.
The Paw Project are committed and determined to educate about declawing, to help as many declawed cats as they can and ultimately to get declawing banned.
We MUST continue to help them! No one likes too many laws, but a worldwide declawing ban is essential, because to quote some words from the Paw Project video:
‘Laws can’t change the heart but they can restrain the heartless’
you are so right Kylee x
Well it should be banned. It needs to be world Wide i just dont understand it all.
In Australia declawing isn’t actually banned but it is considered extremely inhumane and very rarely done.
Thanks Jo, just needed to squash the story about the ‘new’ way of declawing, this article and the poster are doing the rounds now to stop it thank goodness
Ours do too, they love to stretch up the fences and tree trunks, as well as their indoor scratchers