The Benefits of Declawing Your Cat

I have read many articles about the disadvantages of declawing a cat, but seldom seen one written on the other side of the question---the benefits of declawing your cat and reasons why you might want to consider this surgery for your pet.

When I was younger, a friend brought his dog to visit our home. Our cat, being curious, ran up to the dog and touched the dogs eye with her front paw, extending her front claw. which penetrated the dogs eye. It only took an instant to destroy the dog's eye forever.

I couldn't help but wonder how much worse it would have been had it been a small child's eye.

We rushed the dog to the nearest vet, and, at first, were told that the dog was fortunate the claw had not damaged the eye other than a straight line in and out; eye drops should take care of the problem. Unfortunately, the eye developed several infections and a cataract as a result of this incident with the cat and, ultimately this friendly outgoing family dog had to have his eye removed.

This incident has always been a strong reminder for me to use extreme caution with a cat in the home with my young children. My youngest daughter has long hair, and I have often caught our cat sneaking up behind her and trying to catch her hair from behind as it dances about with her movement.

A less urgent but more common reason often given for declawing cats is to save one's furniture from being shredded. Those who are against declawing, for any reason, dismiss this problem with words like, "Well, train your cat to use a scratching post."

They have a good point, but even cats who are trained to use a scratching post, have lapses, and it only takes a few minutes alone with your brand-new, thousand dollar couch, to have it looking like it is ready for the scrap bin.

Even though our cat does use his scratching post, I still find him stretching out from time to time on the side of our couch and using it for a scratching post, because he is too lazy to take the extra few steps to his post!

Declawing detractors also insist that cats use their front claws to defend themselves. From my observations, cats do not use their front claws to fight and defend; they use them for playing with mice, snakes, birds, and grooming. They also use them for balance when climbing trees, or furniture.

A healthy cat recovers from surgery quickly and has strong enough toes that they become the balancing mechanism instead of their claws.

Having had 4 cats declawed over the years, I can tell you that I witnessed two cats climb straight up the side of a 7-foot hutch right after they arrived home from surgery. This is with bandages up to the top of both their front legs. I find it unlikely that a cat would be unable to climb a tree without its front claws if they can climb the smooth side of a hutch with bandages on.

Lastly I would like to talk about the reasons why declawing is looked down upon so much. I spoke with a local veterinarian office regarding my request to have our cat declawed. The receptionist was very negative and argued that I shouldn't consider "amputating" my cat's toes.

Having already looked into the subject, I asked her how she felt regarding the spaying and neutering process which is looked upon favorably in our culture. "We are 'saving' animals by those things," she replied.

In discussing the surgery with her, I gently pointed out that by spaying a female cat, we are performing a hysterectomy on the animal. By her reasoning, maybe we should solve our human overpopulation problem by pulling people in off the streets and performing hysterectomies.

Why aren't we performing little tubal ligations on these animals? We certainly have the technology. This would certainly be less invasive than a hysterectomy.

The same reasoning applies to the option of neutering. Are we performing little vasectomies on male cats? No, of course not! We are castrating them. Why aren't we up in arms about these procedures?

Having had pets undergo all of these procedures over the years. I can assure you that, on my cats, the average recovery time for neutering is the quickest, followed by declawing and finally spaying which is the most difficult for the cat to recover from.

Lest you think I enjoy causing pain to animals, I don't. We have neutered, spayed, and, yes, declawed, our pets over the years and I challenge you to find more loved, or more loving animals anywhere.

Do take time to consider all of the ramifications of a surgery before you jump on a negative or positive bandwagon. Declawing a cat really does have some positive aspects that you should consider.