Please for the love of god

captainsandcats:

whooliganshenanigans:

fourbeatgait:

Do not declaw your cats. Today my friend who works at a local rescue received an application for a cat adoption. There’s a section for “Do you plan on declawing your new cat?” and the person checked the box for yes and wrote “We have expensive furniture.”

ok then don’t get a cat

sorry but if you’re going to mutilate your animal to avoid ruining your expensive furniture then a cat is not the animal you need

So many reasons not to this

-it’s EXTREMELY painful. they don’t just remove the claw, they remove the TOE up to the first joint.

-if your cat escapes your home, they have absolutely ZER0 way of defending or feeding themselves (not that your cat should be allowed outside for any reason but that’s a whole separate rant)

-your cat will be in pain while walking. because they removed that actual bone, your cat’s weight is now balanced on that second bone in their toe, not the first as was designed. Painful.

-Your cat may even lose the desire to be touched. literally we adopted this adolescent cat whose owners abandoned him because he was an escape artist. they had already declawed him and for the longest time he wouldn’t even let us get near his feet. like we couldn’t touch him if it wasn’t his head or the base of his tail.

do. not. declaw. your. cat.

Alternatively:

-buy little nail caps. they sell them at pet stores and they come in all sorts of cute colors

-buy furniture guards. figure out where your cat is most aggressive with scratching. buy a furniture guard and place a cat tree or scratching post nearby and use some catnip or treats to attract their attention to it

-literally just trim the nails with nail clippers. be careful not to quick them. if your cat starts fussing, take a break and come back later to avoid accidents due to them moving around

don’t declaw your cat

they sell this stuff called Felaway i think is how it’s spelled and it has like pheromones that repel your kitty from that specific spot. works wonders

Additional info:

-One of the most common side effects of declawing is that the cat often stops using the litter box consistently. Imagine, if you will, that you just had surgery on your feet, and had your toes amputated. You got one day’s worth of pain medication, and after that, you were expected to get up and walk around normally, and not just that, to use your feet to dig in a sandbox. Of course, that hurts. It hurts every time your cat uses the litter box. And over time, an association develops between the box and pain. And so the cat begins to avoid the box, and pee or poo in other places. Like the floor. Or your clean laundry. Or your bed. And maybe it doesn’t happen right away and you have years of perfect litter box use but-

-Because declawing alters the way your cat walks on its feet, declawing can cause chronic back and joint pain and early-onset arthritis. That, too, can lead to your cat avoiding the litter box because climbing over the rim can hurt too, resulting in the same kind of pain association.

-Claws are a cat’s first line of defense. Look at any video of a threatened cat. If the threat doesn’t go away with hissing alone, most cats are going to move on to swatting at the threat. When you declaw your cat, you take away that first line of defense. This leaves your cat feeling very insecure and afraid. Your cat may develop anxiety or paranoia, and a once loving and friendly cat can turn into a cat that hides all the time and is fearful of everything. Your cat may also resort to the next escalation of defense- biting. I see people a lot who say “Oh I have to declaw! I don’t want my kids to get scratched!” or “I have an immunity condition so I can’t get scratched!”. Here’s the thing. Cat scratches are typically shallow, easy to clean, and quick to heal. Cat BITES? Just one can put you in the hospital. Bites tend to be deep punctures and cat mouths are full of infection-causing bacteria. I’ve been bitten by cats before. Once very badly by my own cat who really didn’t want to go to the vet. Within an hour, infection was setting in (I still had to take his brother to the vet for his checkup so I slapped on a bandage and hoped for the best). By the middle of my vet visit, my arm was starting to swell and turn all red and blotchy. As soon as I got back from the vet, I had to go straight to the local MedExpress for a tetanus shot and antibiotics. A co-worker of mine from the local animal shelter was bitten once and spent three days in the hospital hooked up to IV antibiotics. Cat bites are nothing to mess around with.

-Declawing makes vets a LOT of money. Right behind spay/neuter, it’s the most lucrative elective surgery vets offer. Because of that, many of them do not appropriately discuss the potential side effects and drawbacks. They try to push this amputation surgery as “routine” and will make lofty claims that their way of doing it (be it lasers or whatever else) is “less painful” for the cat. None of that is true. Declawing, no matter what the method, is so painful that some cats will feel the pain WHILE UNDER ANESTHESIA. They will twitch and cry out in pain and they’re not even fully awake to feel it. And when they do wake up, they will either lay completely immobilized by pain, or slam themselves into the sides of their cages trying to get away from the agony in their feet that no amount of painkillers can take away. It’s really hard to watch a cat suffering like that, and most owners never even know about it. The older the cat is when the declaw happens, the worse it is. But don’t ever let a vet tell you declawing is painless or routine, even for kittens.

ALSO. I have seen a lot of people who think that, because they already have declawed cats, if they get a new cat, that one has to be declawed too, or he’ll beat up on the other cats. That’s not true AT ALL. I have nine cats. Only one of them is declawed. She came to us that way, after being thrown out of a truck, like garbage, in the street. Every issue known to be caused by declawing, she has. She pees on the floor. She bites. She’s insecure to the point of paranoia. She has trouble balancing and doesn’t walk normally. But she does not let the other cats, or my 98 lb dog, for that matter, push her around. So it’s completely untrue that you can’t have a successful “mixed” household.

Declawing for any reason other than medical necessity is cruel. Period.