Cat De-Clawing

[jezahb]

Also, watch his front legs and joints as he ages. Declawed cats have a MUCH higher rate of early arthritis in their front end and even hips. Some cats at our practice would come in at 6 or 7 after being declawed as kittens with such severe elbow joint degeneration they needed thousands of dollars in surgery or euthanasia. Not super common, but it does happen, and the sooner you catch it the better. Declawing changes the cats natural gait and puts unnatural amount of strain on his joints

 

[barbb]

As someone who has worked in rescue for 12+ years I have met a lot of people at adoption events who approach and ask what to do about their cat and a declawed surgery that has gone wrong. They have experienced nerve damage, infections, and worse. They cry and say they wish they had known about the complications. 

The older a cat is when it has the surgery, the harder it is on the cat. There is that much more weight to put onto its paws. And then the kitty has to paw at the litter box with bandages on its paws. Often the kitty associates the litter box with the pain and avoids the box- that is why so many declawed cats are "pee cats". 

One of our own cats is a returned declawed pee cat. We are taking care of the small beautiful creature that someone mutilated and then threw out like garbage on the front lawn when it didn't work out. 

I view declawing as mutilation, equivalent to chinese foot binding in ancient times and a barbaric practice that most other countries do not even condone. I agree with the poster who said it would be appropriate to rehome your kitty than have it endure so much pain because you want to keep it. 

 

[missymotus]

Poor kitty, so glad declawing is illegal over here and claws are just accepted as part of a cat.

I see this thread is over a month old, hopefully he's recovered well enough?