A Pet's View / December 2006
The Most Unkind Cut of All
It’s illegal in England, Italy, France Spain and Germany, banned except for extreme medical circumstances in over twenty nations from Australia to Yugoslavia and from Brazil to Japan. But, in the US, the inhumane practice of declawing cats is a common surgery. In other countries, declawing is considered mutilation. In America, the serious surgery sometimes gets all the attention of a bad pedicure.
The cat’s claw is not, however, a toenail. It is so closely adhered to the bone that to remove the claw, the last bone of the cat’s claw has to be amputated, including bones, ligaments, and tendons. The bone, nerve, joint capsule, collateral ligaments, and the extensor and flexor tendons must all be amputated. Declawing is not a “simple”, single surgery but ten separate, painful amputations of the third phalanx up to the last joint of each toe. It is the equivalent of cutting off the last joint of a person’s fingers.
During recuperation, cats must still use their feet to walk, jump, and scratch in the litter box regardless of their pain. Cats try to hide their vulnerability, but declawing is a painful surgery, with a very painful recovery period.
Unlike most mammals who walk on the soles of their paws or feet, cats walk on their toes. Their back, shoulder, paw and leg joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments and nerves are naturally designed to support and distribute the cat’s weight across its toes as it walks, runs and climbs. Cats use their claws for balance, for exercising, and for stretching muscles in their legs, back, shoulders, and paws. Stretching these muscles by digging their claws into a surface and pulling back against their own clawhold is the only way cats can exercise and tone their back and shoulder muscles. The toes help the foot meet the ground at a precise angle to keep leg, shoulder and back muscles and joints in proper alignment. Removal of the last digits of the toes drastically alters the conformation of their feet, causing feet to meet the ground at an unnatural angle.
The rate of complications after declawing is high compared with routine procedures. Complications of the amputation can be excruciating pain, damage to the radial nerve, hemorrhage, bone chips that prevent healing, painful regrowth of deformed claw inside of the paw and chronic back and joint pain as shoulder, leg and back muscles weaken.
Other complications include paw ischemia, postoperative hemorrhage, lameness due to wound infection or footpad laceration, necrosis of the second phalanx, and abscess associated with retention of portions of the third phalanx. During amputation, the bone may shatter and create a sequestrum, which serves as a focus for infection with continuous drainage from the toe, and necessitates a second anesthesia and surgery. Abnormal growth of severed nerve ends can cause long-term, painful sensations in the toes. Many cats also suffer a loss of balance because they can no longer achieve a secure foothold on their amputated stumps.
Some cats are so shocked by declawing. their personalities change. Lively, friendly cats have become withdrawn and introverted after declawing. Others become nervous, fearful or aggressive. Declawed cats frequently resort to biting, their only remaining defense, when confronted with even minor threats. Biting is an overcompensation for the insecurity of having no claws. In some cases, when declawed cats use the litterbox after surgery, their feet are so tender they associate their new pain with the box, resulting in a life-long aversion to the litter box. Cats that can no longer mark with their claws, may mark with urine instead, resulting in inappropriate elimination problems.
Declawed cats can become so traumatized they spend their lives perched on top of doors and refrigerators, out of reach of real and imaginary predators against which they have no defense. The constant state of stress caused by the feeling of defenselessness makes some more prone to disease. The stress and frustration from declawing often leads to physical and psychological disorders including skin disorders, suppression of the immune system, cystitis and irritable bowel syndrome.
The inhumanity of the procedure is most clearly demonstrated by the nature of cats’ recovery following the surgery. Unlike routine recoveries from neutering surgeries, declawing surgery results in cats bouncing off the walls of the recovery cage because of excruciating pain. More stoic cats huddle in the corner of the recovery cage, immobilized to a state of helplessness by overwhelming pain. Declawing, which involves deforming, disfiguring, disjointing and dismemberment, fits the dictionary definition of mutilation. Partial digital amputation has been employed for centuries as torture and in veterinary medicine, the procedure is a model of severe pain for testing the efficacy of analgesic drugs.
Around the world, the operative removal of claws to fit an owner’s lifestyle or convenience with no benefit to the cat is seen as an act of abuse that should rightly be forbidden. Sensible, humane alternatives are readily available for undesirable scratching. A declawed cat is a maimed, mutilated cat, and no excuse can justify the operation -or such total betrayal of a pet’s trust. PL
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