For all the people who are either A. thinking about declawing your cat or B. dont see anything wrong with declawing cats, let me tell you my personal experiences with declawing.
I work as a vet tech and see roughly about 3- 5 cats get declawed EVERY week. I cannot even begin to rightly explain how bad these cats suffer after the procedure. Usually when theyre waking up they start flailing their feet (since the feet are bandaged up and theyre in pain) and start hitting their paws on the side of the cage, usually instantly making their bandages a complete bloody mess. Sometimes if the vets didnt completely glue the paw pads together (yes, they dont suture the opening up, they literally glue it) after AMPUTATING the cats ends of their toes, the paw pads will tear open and just bleed, making us have to wrestle down the cats and apply more glue to their already painful feet. The next day we take off the bandages, clean up the cats usually bloody feet and make them look as nice as they did when they came in and send them off with their owners, who are completely unaware of what their cat just went through.
Just yesterday at work we had a cat come in who got declawed a few months back and was limping on one of his feet. After taking a closer look, we realized it felt like he had a splinter in one of his toes. We put him out and opened up the toe to find, low and behold, that the cats nail started growing back in this poor cats toe, literally making it so that the cats foot got stabbed every time he put pressure on that foot. And if any of you have felt a cats nail, you know how sharp they get.
Declawing makes cats more likely to bite, I’ve experienced it. Declawed cats usually wont let you touch their feet because theyre uncomfortable, even years after, Ive seen it. Declawed cats usually end up with severe arthritis in their feet, Ive seen it. And the reason vets dont tell you all these things is because they make money off of crippling your cat, I have seen how much money we make off of declawing cats. The procedure only takes about an hour, which means we can fit in more declaws in a day, which means easy money.
Im tired of pretending like I dont see this happen to cats every single day I work, and Im tired of putting my morals in the back of my head because Im scared of what would happen if I said something. Its time people start speaking up, if everyone were to stay quiet, nothing would ever get done.
STOP DECLAWING CATS.
