Does Declawing Hurt Cats?

"In general, declawing is a painful procedure" is an understatement. According to the American Association of Feline Practitioners, "Physically, regardless of the method used, onychectomy causes a higher level of pain than spays and neuters. Patients may experience both adaptive and maladaptive pain; in addition to inflammatory pain, there is the potential to develop long-term neuropathic or central pain if the pain is inadequately managed during the perioperative and healing periods." Unfortunately, scientific research shows that veterinarians are extremely variable in their pain management protocols. Of those that do provide pain meds, it's usually given only for 3 days, despite a study that found that cats remained painful for at least 12 days (the end of the study period.) Cats hide pain. They hide it extremely well. As a feline veterinarian, I've seen cats with severe pain (any cause) who "act perfectly normal." The people who report "no problems" with declawed cats have no idea what their cat is actually feeling. If both of your cat's declawed feet are painful, your cat will not limp. Your cat will still eat. Your cat will still purr. Your cat will still play. But chronic pain from declawing is a fact, and the scientific research proves it. If you've had a declawed cat that did not have obvious problems after surgery, congratulations, you're in the 66%. Your next declawed cat might destroy your carpets with urine, or send you to the hospital with bite wounds. There's a 33% chance of one of those happening. Is it worth the risk, when there are more than a dozen safe, effective, *humane* alternatives? This article describes declawing as "removal of the last digit of the cats' toe." That means amputation. Declawing is an orthopedic surgery that drastically changes the way the cat walks, virtually guaranteeing arthritis later in life. Forty percent of human amputees experience phantom pain for the rest of their lives, no matter how or when the amputation occurred--even as an infant, even with perfect surgical technique, even with abundant post-op pain meds. Declawing is ten separate amputations. You can do the math. Dozens of countries have examined declawing and declared it to be extremely inhumane and, in many cases, illegal. When presented with *all* of the scientific evidence, 8 U.S. cities legally banned the procedure, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even Beverly Hills (where they have a lot of nice furniture). Even the AVMA admits that "Surgical declawing is not a medically necessary procedure for the cat in most cases. While rare in occurrence, there are inherent risks and complications with any surgical procedure including, but not limited to, anesthetic complications, hemorrhage, infection, and pain." Please, for your cat's sake, don't declaw!

People should not declaw their cats, they should get a different pet. It is barbaric. Why on earth chop off bits of a perfectly healthy animal, which causes it to have bad balance, a problem in the litter box, often pain in the feet forever because the surface the weight rests on has been greatly reduced by removing in total five bits of bone from the foot. Think about it. How well would you walk if the last bit of every one of your toes was removed? Even should the pain actually go away, if you were lucky? Even for humans, every bit of toe is very important for their balance. Just the loss of the little toe can have very unexpected results.

How can anyone mutilate an animal to protect their furniture? And being scratched myself, normally by accident because my cats love me and I treat them well so they don't scratch me, well I just put some iodine and am fine.

you can't hurt something that doesn't have a soul.

Declawing is unnecessary. You can clip the claws and buy scratching posts. If this is a furniture issue, cover the furniture until you can train them to use posts. As someone else said, declawing is an indication of a lazy owner, and a greedy vet.

Do not declaw your cats:( It is so mean!

Give it a rest, declawed cats do fine.