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Old February 3rd, 2016, 04:24 PM
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Winston Winston is offline
Mom of 3 precious Angels
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Hamilton Ontario
Posts: 7,300
Welcome to Pets! I am not going to voice an opinion because as Marko said alot of times its a personal decision.

However I thought I would share this new posting on my Veterinarians website.

She is not only a Vet but a Feline Specialist. There are only a few of them in Canada. I have to tell you I love this Vet and am totally confident in her and of the comments made in the note I post below. This article is pretty current from June 2015. Anyway have a read and see what a feline specialist indicates about declawing a cat and what is involved along with recovery.




We Are No Longer Declawing Cats
June 28, 2015 / Cat's Meow / Leave a comment



The Cat Clinic has recently made the choice to stop performing declaws on cats. This has been a decision that our veterinarians and staff have contemplated for quite some time. Medicine has changed dramatically over the past several decades. Many procedures once common in both human beings and animals are no longer performed. We believe that not performing this procedure is the next step in advancing our medicine and patient care.
There are many downsides to declawing a cat.
• Post-operative complications such as infection, wound breakdown, and post-operative pain are common
• Long term pain due to arthritis, “phantom pain syndrome”, and tendon contracture can occur even with excellent surgical technique and pain management
• Declawed cats bear weight differently than intact cats, leading to increased rates of arthritis at distant sites
• Declawed cats may experience behaviour changes making them less confident, more prone to urinating outside the litter box, unable to properly express natural behaviours, and more likely to bite in some situations
Scratching is an essential behaviour to a happy, healthy cat. Cats are territorial and scratching is a way for them to mark their territory so they feel secure in their home. You cannot teach a cat not to scratch, but you can teach them to scratch only in appropriate places. Our goal is to make sure cats scratch WHERE you want them to and not to stop them from scratching. The staff and veterinarians at The Cat Clinic and Village Cat Clinic will be happy to provide advice and resources to prevent destructive scratching in your home.
There are also a variety of options to prevent cats from scratching that are non-surgical. These include nail trimming, “soft-paws” (gel caps which cover nails), synthetic facial pheromones, deterrents, and behavioural modification. Keeping a stimulating environment for your cat is also essential.
Remember that a declawed cat is not a “safer” cat. Declawed cats commonly are more defensive and may bite, which carries a higher risk of disease transmission than scratching. A dewormed, flea-free cat is incapable of causing “cat scratch fever”. We recommend all cats, even those kept indoors, be treated monthly during flea season with a topical parasiticide and be dewormed on a regular basis.

We at The Cat Clinic and Village Cat Clinic take the relationship you have with your cat very seriously. It is our belief that no longer declawing cats allows us to be leaders in feline medicine and surgery. If you have any questions about managing scratching or are having difficulty deciding whether or not to declaw your cat, please stop by our clinic and talk with our veterinary team.


Declawing a cat is an amputation of their third digit and it is a major painful surgical procedure. Local nerve blocks, multimodal and lengthy at home post-surgical pain control are required and “laser declawing” is still an amputation and painful. Talk to us first, we are here to help the cats in our community.
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Tabitha April 10, 1995 - August 23, 2013
Bomber April 10, 1995 - July 12, 2010
Winston Nov 15, 1999 - September 15, 2011
Sophie Aug 30, 2011

"UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED AN ANIMAL, PART OF THEIR SOUL REMAINS UNAWAKENED"
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
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