"Let's Get the Kitty Declawed" - Or Not

by Malcolm Riordan

Many requests to declaw a cat will fall by the wayside simply with the mention that declawing is not something that we as veterinarians do automatically or even routinely.

Another wave of defections comes upon hearing the description of the declaw procedure – that it is a surgery under general anesthesia that involves amputation of all ten (front only) nails including the unit of bone tissue from which the nails grow: essentially an amputation by disarticulation - not cutting of bone - of the first phalange of each front digit. This small bone serves both to grow out and to anchor the awesome feline claw. Many folks are no longer motivated to declaw kitty once they appreciate the physical/anatomical extent of the procedure.

More cat owners considering declawing will bail out upon realizing that after the procedure their cat would stay in hospital for 48 hours to monitor bandages - applied to prevent bleeding and protect the ten healing areas - and to restrict activity. I think some folks begin to suspect the cost of general anesthesia, surgery, anti-inflammatory and pain control medications, antibiotics, two or three days of hospitalization, and so forth is not what they had in mind: gosh this isn't casual or cheap Correct, it's neither.

The great weeding out of the notion to declaw kitty continues when we get down to the part about why it is that they want their cat declawed. A devilish kitten is raking skin or other personal property? It's time to discuss a few basic ideas of shaping or redirecting behavior, and that a few months of maturing will decrease the intensity of the typical jihadist kitten. A young adult cat persists in shredding skin and other property? Then let's provide appropriate surfaces to terrorize, such as scratching posts or boards, and some of those way fun cat-attack-play toys, the kind at the end of a rod or string. But the cat is scratching my child If your child is not a fast learner with that, perhaps you may have to educate the victim. Seriously, teaching a child how to interact with pets is among the important lessons of life.

We go on to pick off a fair number of would-be-declawers with an effort to keep the offending cat's nails trimmed, say every two or three weeks. We can teach you to do this. Or, check out these cat claw caps (Soft Paws) which you can glue over the claws and replace when they fall off as the nails grow out.

Willing cat owners can pick up on the nature of these various ideas. Incorporating a few, or even one of these ideas can be a solution. People find that it is not an impossible feat of cat-management to finesse their kitty into a peaceful, clawed coexistence, an armed neutrality.

Beyond the shred of a doubt, there are recalcitrant felines who are sharply and most pointedly unwilling to participate in these elegant sounding solutions. Once we have narrowed the field down to the top-claw, bad actor, fractious felines that still shred household furnishings, there still remains a cunning array of counter-terrorism techniques and improvised devices that can automatically, in some cases, provide unpleasant consequences when a cat claws the furniture: startling noise, a surprise dose of water, mini static-electricity shocks, etc. Again, willing and imaginative cat owners can circumvent a need to declaw even when we're down to dearly beloved yet devil-possessed cats.

In the course of consultation, which we require, a small number of indoor-only recidivist cats whose egregious claw deployments interfere seriously with the human-animal bond may emerge as valid candidates for declawing.

Importantly, and coming from a different angle than The War on Furniture, a few indoor cats may become declaw candidates in situations where the owner or some person in the home is immunocompromised by disease, viral infection, chemotherapy, the natural aging process or so on, to a degree where even a few – or any – cat scratch injuries amount to much more of a threat.

With careful patient selection, and in such dire staits as these, most veterinarians are willing to perform the service of declawing kitty. We have worked our way down to earnest cat owners, desperate to preserve the relationship with their cat.

**Please note that Woods Humane Society performs no veterinary services for the public or their pets.**

Woods Rafter Cat image on banner by Malcolm Riordan.