The Cat’s Out of The Bag: Declawing Must End A fluffy companion that is found all over the world, cats have found a special place in many people's hearts. However, some people live in places where owners are afraid furniture or other parts of the property could get damaged by cat’s sharp claws; which leads to people choosing to declaw their cats. Declawing cats is banned in many major countries all over the world, except Canada and America, where “It is estimated that 25% of American cats (around 22,000,000 cats) have been declawed” ("Recording Icon Ian Anderson Lends Support to Veterinarian-Supported New York State Cat Declaw Ban”). While the declawing surgery may sound like something that isn’t a big deal, it is not as simple as it seems.…show more content… To declaw a cat, a complete amputation of the last joint of the toes is required. There are two ways to do this: either the surgery where a special guillotine style nail trimmer is used in order to cut the joint right out from in between the two bones; or the alternative procedure in which the veterinarian uses a scalpel in order to scrape out every piece of the joint between the two bones.
“A 1994 study conducted at Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine followed up on 163 cats after the declaw procedure. Fifty percent had one or more complications immediately after the surgery. Common early problems were pain, bleeding, lameness, and swelling. The cats who underwent the blade declaw had more of these early complications than those who had the trimmer declaw”…show more content… While the problem with apartments banning cats unless they are declawed still currently exists, by banning the declawing of cats altogether, that problem would resolve itself. "’At our communities, we see little if any cat damage--aside from cat urine,’ O'Riley says. ‘Declawing won't solve that. Any damage cats do in an apartment is likely to be to furniture owned by the renter’” (Lee). Now that an apartment company can see through their apartments that the cat's claws doing all of the damage to the building, then other companies should follow suit and stop encouraging the declawing of cats. To preserve the furniture, cat owners can use the alternative training techniques rather than declawing their
