>>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.
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Dottie

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