Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am not by any means an advocate for declawing. In fact none of my kitties have ever been declawed. I think for the most part if you give them the proper equipment, scratching posts ect... you should never have a problem. However if it comes down to the kitty destroying everything in site and the client turning over the cat to the pound, (providing this is a good client who I know takes excellent care of the cat and the kitty is an inside kitty only), I think you have to make a very difficult choice. A good, safe home, or possible death. What an awful decision to have to make but I would rather see a cat with a home, warmth, food and love than without. As a side note, if the decision to declaw is made, try to find a clinic who will do it with laser (much less painful, and no nasty bandage changings needed) as well as appropriate pain management.

Jen, Sid the cat, and Bodie the Shiba

I agree with you. I have 2 cats that are declawed and 8 that are not, not counting the ferals that are here for taming. They of course, have their claws too. I would always much rather a cat have a loving home and no claws than be put at the pound with claws. And lets face it, some cats are more destructive than others. My siamese ( one of the declaws) would literally climb the wall and hang by 3 feet and use the other one to remove my wallpaper, she refused to think about using a scratching post no matter what it was covered with, nor would she use the cardboard ones and no one had invented those little claw cover thingys at that point. Finally with a heavy heart, I made the decision to have her claws removed. She was destroying my house. My Vet is wonderful and she has had no problems whatso ever. Very little pain after and she still manages to bop the other cats if they so much as look at her wrong. Still is a champion fly and spider catcher too

-----
PHWildCat
Cat Board Monitor and Chat Host
Pet Hobbyist
A house without cats is like a garden without flowers

Your kitty is beautiful. I absolutely love siamese and burmese kitties!! They have such attitudes about life!

Jen

Not at all a difficult choice for me. My possessions around my house, even my new house itself, are not important enough to me to cause me to want to surgically modify a cat for life. If needed, if I ever did acquire a cat that couldn't be taught to use appropriate objects and actually was physically capable of 'destroying the house' (whew! Big kitty!) I would be modifying the environment around the cat, not the cat itself.

And isn't the 'loving' home that would dump a cat for inappropriate scratching also likely to dump it when it does any of the other number of inappropriate things cats are prone to do at some point in their lives? The people who are at wit's end about the cat scratching on the couch are going to be just as fed up with the cat that repeatedly urinates on the couch. I've seen lots of owners 'get rid of' their cats for that reason. Then the cat is declawed, and ends up dumped anyway.

>>Not at all a difficult choice for me. My possessions around my house, even my new house itself, are not important enough to me to cause me to want to surgically modify a cat for life. If needed, if I ever did acquire a cat that couldn't be taught to use appropriate objects and actually was physically capable of 'destroying the house' (whew! Big kitty!) I would be modifying the environment around the cat, not the cat itself.
>>I agree with this 100%. The only reason I would ever declaw any of my own personal cats is for a medical necessity. Material things mean nothing to me without my cats and "things can be replaced", my cats cannot.
>>And isn't the 'loving' home that would dump a cat for inappropriate scratching also likely to dump it when it does any of the other number of inappropriate things cats are prone to do at some point in their lives? The people who are at wit's end about the cat scratching on the couch are going to be just as fed up with the cat that repeatedly urinates on the couch. I've seen lots of owners 'get rid of' their cats for that reason. Then the cat is declawed, and ends up dumped anyway.Another absolutely true statement. Our rescue has taken in many declawed cats because the owners either left them behind when they moved (left outside yet!)or because they developed other habits that very possibly stemmed from the trauma of declawing. People don't realize that some cats can exhibit other behavioral problems, such as aggressiveness, innappropriate elimination or biting, due to the fact their claws were taken away and they now feel insecure.
-----
Dottie
Proudly owned by The Catnip Crew...Munchkin,Casey,Maddie,Harley,Meadow,Ashley,Nicky and Mushka

Difficult choice, maybe not for you. But not everyone feels the same way, nor has the funds readily available to replace the damage done, nor has the luxury of owning their own house/apartment/townhouse/condo. And I have seen plenty of really great owners that have tried every method possible to get the cat not to ruin the new couch or chair, carpet or whatever. Some have even gone so far as to hire behaviorists to come into the house to try to rectify the situation, but to no avail. I do not think that declawing is the first choice in these cases, but when all else fails and you have exhausted every possible alternative, what would you have the owner who desperatly loves his/her cat, and wants to keep him/her but also wants a relatively decent home, to do??? I have worked in a vet clinic for years, and am currently in vet school, and my personal choice is not to perform declaws..... But if I have an good owner who has exhausted all of the possible alternatives then choices have to be made, hard or not. Medicine is advancing and declaw with laser is an up and coming method which serves as a great viable alternative to surgical declaw. With the advent of laser and appropriate pain control if I absolutly had to declaw a cat to keep it in it's home vs. placing it up for adoption.... Well, it's a no brainer for me.... living kitty with a home or a dead one because of overpopulated shelters.

As before I agree with you
-----
PHWildCat
Cat Board Monitor and Chat Host
Pet Hobbyist
A house without cats is like a garden without flowers

My boyfriend adopted Moxie from a shelter at 8 weeks old. She was a wild little thing. Would climb up the drapes. Dig at his computer chair. He even tried putting tape on the chairs. Only problem the first time he tired he used Duct-tape. Now when you have a long hair (Maine Coon Mix) cat with tuffs coming out of her feet you probably shouldn't use tape. BUt he didn't know that so on the chair the tape went. At 3 in the morning when Moxie decided to wake him up by digging at the chair she got the tape stuck to her feet. Freaked out and then got her one of her feet stuck to her belly and her tail stuck to a foot.
Now here he is all by him self trying to detape her. He had to use scissors to get it off. When I say her next the fur was gone from her feet and she had a big place on her belly with short fur.
My bf also would take his cat every where he went. He would take to his parents house on the weekends when he came back to Maine for a break from the big city live. Most people I know would just leave their cat for a weekend with either a big bowl of food or a sitter. Not him he didn't trust any one.
Anyway his mother after having her house ruined gave him the choice of not bringing the cat any more or having laser surgery.
Of course she ended up with the laser surgery.
I was not happy about it. But she was only at the vet for a couple of days and when she came home she was running around a like a little wild cat again. She didn't even seem to realize she doesn't have claws. Also in the parents home is Buddy who is declawed and patches who isn't.
I guess it just depends on the cat. Neither of these cats would ever end up back at the shelter.
I do agree that some people have their cats declawed unnessarily, and usually those cats are the ones that end up at the shelter. I worked at a shelter in WA state for two yrs. And we would get a lot of declawed cats in. Both those also were the first to get adopted (the shelter was a no kill shelter by the way but that is another story).
Good luck on the difficult decision.

Jaime
ps. I was to lazy to proof read.

>>Difficult choice, maybe not for you. But not everyone feels the same way, nor has the funds readily available to replace the damage done, nor has the luxury of owning their own house/apartment/townhouse/condo. And I have seen plenty of really great owners that have tried every method possible to get the cat not to ruin the new couch or chair, carpet or whatever. Some have even gone so far as to hire behaviorists to come into the house to try to rectify the situation, but to no avail. I do not think that declawing is the first choice in these cases, but when all else fails and you have exhausted every possible alternative, what would you have the owner who desperatly loves his/her cat, and wants to keep him/her but also wants a relatively decent home, to do??? >>

I don't have a problem with the people who have truly tried every possible alternative and remedy for a clawing cat. I would obviously want the cat to remain in his home and be loved and cared for for the rest of his or her life, so declawing would be the logical choice FOR THEM. The problem I have is with the people who declaw the cat because "cats have claws and will scratch everything" and then turn around and dump the poor cat.
Declawing is a very controversial issue and has to be done on an individual basis for the right reasons.
I was just stating how *I* felt about *my* cats and declawing. Guess I should have made that a bit clearer.
-----
Dottie
Proudly owned by The Catnip Crew...Munchkin,Casey,Maddie,Harley,Meadow,Ashley,Nicky and Mushka

I understood what you were saying Munchie. I know that you know me very well and know that for no reason, ever would I give any of my furbabies away. I don't mind the furniture, after all it is theirs. However, replacing wall paper is expensive, time consuming and I just can't afford to do that every couple of months. Samantha and Tabitha were the only 2 that seemed to think the wall paper needed to be pulled down, hence they are declawed after trying all available means to convince them that couches and chairs are ok. Walls are not! Both cats seem to not realize that they don't have claws. Just ask Charlee, they pop him often enough or Attila who both of them send rolling when he gets to obnoxious....at least once a day. It is a controversial topic and a very personal choice for each and every person. I just ask that people think long and hard, try every available means to deter the cat before they make that decision. Please don't just do it cause it is an available surgery and you want too. Think of the pet first!
-----
PHWildCat
Cat Board Monitor and Chat Host
Pet Hobbyist
A house without cats is like a garden without flowers

And then you have the cat that friends of mine own. This cat used to climb up the wallpaper onto the ceiling and cling upside down like a spider. It sounds hysterical, but it was a problem and eventually that cat was going to be seriously hurt.
The cat was declawed because nothing else stopped this behavior.
Mary

Yes, it does sound funny...but I can certainly see the problem with it. Wonder where the cat thought he was going???
-----
PHWildCat
Cat Board Monitor and Chat Host
Pet Hobbyist
A house without cats is like a garden without flowers

Mary's story of the friend who had a cat who climbed to the ceiling is really outstanding. I don't declaw my cats and am basically against it but guess I could see it in an extreme situation. However, the wallpaper tales made me think of an English setter puppy we once had. Came home one day and she had found a loose place at the bottom of the wallpaper. Figured out she could just lean back and pull and it would strip off all the way up! She managed to do that to about four strips! Katc

Everyone has good points.

My extreme beef is that I really, truly believe that because vets will still go ahead and declaw if the owner prods them, people DO NOT honestly try everything. There are dozens of things to try that do not involve modifying the cat -- only modifying the cat's environment -- that people never do. The cat that hung from the ceiling, for instance, sounds like a cat that loves to climb and be up high. I have a strong feeling that if the owners had designed something that the cat could climb safely and 'legally', and kept his nails trimmed short, he would have much preferred to climb on that and perch high above more comfortably, rather than going all that way up and having no where to go except to cling there. Hanging from the ceiling sounds like hard work and cats, especially as they mature, usually like taking the less difficult path.

Just things like that. People aren't encouraged to 'think outside the box, if you will, because they know the vet will go ahead and do it. Buying three different types of posts to encourage the cat to use them is an excellent start, and often enough for many cats, but that is not near to trying everything. And despite the vet offering some discouragement on declawing, the fact that they will go ahead with it speaks much more loudly to their clients, actions do speak louder than words. If the vet does it, it must be okay, really. The sheer number of declaws that are performed daily speaks to that.

I think people don't think enough about what they can change around their home, that can easily be changed back when no longer needed, and think too much about just permanently changing the cat. I guess that while definite effort needs to aimed at the cat teaching it where it's approprite, oftentimes as much effort needs to be aimed at the environment. (And this isn't for every cat, just some.) Wall scratching? If it were a few isolated areas, I would block access to it with furniture. Or make the wall as slick as snot in someway, therefore making it an undesirable scratching surface. To protect the sides of furniture, I know someone who built scratchers to fit up against their furniture that were easily slid away if visitors came over. It's not expensive to do, and not diffcult to do considering lumber places will cut things to your measurements. From there it's just carpet remnants and a staple gun.

I rented for three years with my cats and dogs (the cat population has climbed from 3 to 6 in that time) and just purchased my first home last month. I am fairly young, single, living on my own, and a recent college graduate working my first 'real' job at a non-profit....which basically means I'm making a teensy bit more than I did at my job with the vet during my seven years of part time school . Because this is my first place, I'm starting to appreciate why so many people value their furniture and possesions -- although most of my stuff is the same stuff I had while renting-- so I am beginning to understand that. What small savings I put away is strictly held in reserve for emergency vet care. Replacing ruined item is definitely NOT an option for me monetarily, so I take steps to protect them from damage from the get go.

Anyway, again, I just don't think people really do try everything. Except for the rare completely unstable cat, I think any cat can be worked around...as long as the owner is willing to put the thought and effort into it. Once the changes are made, the majority of the effort is over. The changes made to the home are easily undoable, and often might not even be needed later on as the cat matures or loses interest. I think everything is worth a try if declawing is a viable last resort for some people, and I think the cat deserves it. Granted, I know well that there are plenty of people that don't feel that way and never will. Maybe I should open my own business someday, offering to cat-proof people's homes or to make specific pieces to protect belongings? Somehow I think I would end up giving my services away and never making any money, just to save more kitty claws.

The ceiling hanging cat was not the first, nor the only feline member of the household. There were ample cat climbing things, scratching things, entertainment things for it to use. Nothing detered "catwoman" from her ceiling hanging mission.
The friends chose to declaw the front feet because the risk of her falling and doing permanent damage to herself was so great.

Well, it's obviously neither here nor there now. I know your friend did what they thought best for their cat. I'm not trying to rag on your friend, I'm just hoping to put 'outside the box' ideas out there for other people who might be having similar problems with their cat and want to avoid the declaw route. I'm just saying I would have 'designed' something....an oddly-angled shelf mounted way high near the ceiling, probably, if a normal perching shelf along the ceiling wouldn't deter the cat, to make it physically impossible for the cat to reach the ceiling from climbing the wall. It would eliminate the perils of a ceiling-cling by remvoing access to the ceiling. (Ceiling-cling is not to be confused with static-cling. )

What furniture do you think I should have gotten that goes floor to ceiling in all rooms on all walls?? Because the cat did it everywhere. And exactly how is one supposed to make wallpaper slick without ruining it? Like I said, there are 19 cats in this house and only 2 are declawed. I think that speaks for itself, showing that I am not all that picky and tried everything before I made the decision.
-----
PHWildCat
Cat Board Monitor and Chat Host
Pet Hobbyist
A house without cats is like a garden without flowers

19 cats in the house!!!! Holy Moly. I wish I could have that many. I'm only aloud a little ol' three.

I don't think any one will ever agree about declawing. It is sort of along the same lines at letting your cats out.

But if declawing is going to keep them safe and you happy then I agree with it.
I just hope that any one who declaws their kitty does not let it out side.

good luck to all
jaime

"What furniture do you think I should have gotten that goes floor to ceiling in all rooms on all walls?? Because the cat did it everywhere. And exactly how is one supposed to make wallpaper slick without ruining it? "

Plexiglass is my friend.

"Like I said, there are 19 cats in this house and only 2 are declawed. I think that speaks for itself, showing that I am not all that picky and tried everything before I made the decision."

Um, I can't tell whether or not you are asking these questions because you really want me to figure out an answer....because I would be happy to do so if you'd like, but I'm unsure if that's your intent. I'm not trying to offend you or anyone else who has declawed, I'm trying to help out those who are thinking about it.

I've said more than once, my own intention is to educate people who are having problems with their cat that they think are insurmountable, when they actually might not be. I don't know your personal situation, however I DO know what drives the average owner to declawing....and the reasons they come up with tell me there their attempt equals only the tip of the iceberg of what they could have tried. I don't necessarily consider you the average owner, by any means, so that likely doesn't apply to you.

What I will not do is tell people "fine" to declawing without more information from them when the average owner says they've tried it all, because I've never met anyone who has and it not worked. I want to at least ask them what they've tried. My old boss has 12 cats, my mother 4 with claws, I have seven in my house, my old coworkers have 5 and 10 respectively, all with claws. I think they demonstrate something positive. Throwing more things to try out there for people to see is my only intention, because I think there are things people might not have thought of. I apologize if I've offend you, it is not my intent.

Just thought I would post this link for anyone interested.
Paws Come With Claws...It's one of Nature's Laws

-----
Dottie
Proudly owned by The Catnip Crew...Munchkin,Casey,Maddie,Harley,Meadow,Ashley,Nicky and Mushka

I am totally against declawing, it is painful and abusive to the cat. After a cat is declawed, it changes their personality to a more agressive and tend to bite more, that is ther only defense they have. There are other things you can do so the cat won't scratch. There is a product out that called soft paws, you can add to the cats paws. You can get a scratching for your kitty etc. I never get my kitties declawed; I only have on cat that is declawed. When we adopted him, he was only ready declawed on all four paws and beside that had a broken foot. He is a changed cat, his personlity is different then my other two cats. I am advise everyone not to get there cat declawed.