The Instagram post tells you what is happening. This is a “doctor”, a veterinarian, who I believe is based in California and who has decided that she can do “humane” declawing because she’s got a brand-new laser declawing machine and she’s so happy. She also knows that she can’t declawing cats that are adopted from what I presume is a local shelter because their contract says she can’t do it but despite that she does it. There is no such thing as a humane declaw. The whole concept including the operation is inhumane. It is worse than that, it is cruel and against this doctor’s oath. Her oath says that she can only treat animals in the interests of the animal to improve their health and welfare. Declawing cats on the instructions of the cat’s owner For their convenience achieves the exact opposite. There you have it all nicely wrapped up in a sweet package and a bow: exactly what is wrong with the large majority of American veterinarians.
The Paw Project, in the Instagram post, asks what can they do to educate this woman. I’m afraid you can’t educate her. She is beyond it. You will simply have to ban clawing in California and if the AVMA had any teeth, which it hasn’t, she would be struck off the veterinarian’s register and banned from the profession for the remainder of her life. That’s what I was do if I was in charge but it’s a fantasy. Cat advocates do fantasise like that about declawing. We envisage the veterinarian having the tops of their ten fingers amputated in one go just like they do to cats, to see how they felt afterwards. A bloody dream, a nightmare for the veterinarian but they don’t seem to be able to understand what they’re doing to innocent domestic cats.
