There was a kitten at the shelter I foster for (my friends actually fostered him) who was adopted and under contract to never declaw. Well they did anyway. Four paw declaw on a 10 week old. He stopped using the litter box and she returned him. The shelter let the lady know she was no longer welcome. He was the sweetest baby. He would lay on his back in your arms and suck on his thumbs. It's so sad that even when people are informed they still choose to declaw. I hate the reason "well I've declawed cats before and they were fine.." . I don't understand how the risks aren't enough to dissuade them.[/quote/]
Some folks don't like to let a little things like "the facts" get in the way of what they want to do, and they aren't open to reason.
. Poor kitties. I will never declaw again.
Yes, thanks to the internet, my nephew cat still has his claws. He was scheduled to be declawed when he was neutered, but my brother-in-law Googled the subject and was horrified to learn what the process involved, and declawing was cancelled.
Yeah, my Sara had all four of her paws done before I got her. I can't even imagine doing all four paws. When I told my vet that she was declawed on all four they were horrified. You could tell how horrified they were because they stopped what they were doing for a brief second and just had this look on their face before saying, "All four declawed??"
I found out that my vet is more than happy to explain in graphic detail what is done during declaw surgery. Even going so far as to show the various tools used. One of which looks like something used to torture someone in the dark ages.
I wish more vets in my area did this! The clinic we use to use had no issue declawing adult cats and would even do back paws if they felt the owner was "good". There are lots of reasons we no longer use this clinic; but, this was a big reason for me.
I have a feeling the one vet at this office wouldn't question it, but would just do it. But my vet there definitely lets his thoughts on things be known in subtle ways. He doesn't necessarily say them outright, because people probably wouldn't listen to that. But telling them how it's done and showing them the torture devices used? Yeah, that probably has an impact.
I'll never say a previous owner did it, with the exception of Sara because that was the case with her. In fact, I have sometimes questioned whether a *vet* did it with her just because it looks so different from the other cats. With all of our other ones (and we're talking a lot of cats), we just didn't know better. The last one we had declawed was Maple, and that was done up in Toronto before she came here. And the last one we had done (that was not born to a friend's cat) was Lucky, in 1999. The internet was not quite the thing that it is today, even in 2002, so folks just didn't know better about a lot of things.
What area are you guys in? Curious about which regions of the us its normal.
I live in South Dakota. Central central US
. I think de-clawing is most common in the central and southeastern US, less common in the northeast and west coast. It seems linked to general feelings about animal welfare in the area.
MN (Twin Cities area). I think it's probably less common than it used to be, but I still see a LOT of declawed cats in shelters and on Craigslist. I think a lot of people just do it because that's what's done, without doing any sort of research on the subject.
Sad i guess that makes sense. I havent met any animal lovers since i moved to dfw from la. :/I live in South Dakota. Central central US
that just makes my blood boil. firstly because they lied but also at the vet for mutilating a 10 week old baby! they should have been charged with animal cruelty!
