Sorry as a cat lover i believe declawing is a responsible answer to certain problems. Also showing cats tends to be a lot easier if there declawed, defanged & basically chained up. Occasionally they can be a bit fiesty. For a city however to outlaw it is absurd. Typical socialist crap.

Declawing should not be made illegal.

My cat has all of her claws. Why? Because declawing is mean.

No, those are not inherently contradictory positions.

Certain problems? Let me guess? New furniture? New baby?

Any cat fancier that 'shows' a cat that is declawed , defanged and basically chained up either makes you a total ass and clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.

Any breeder out there that mangles a cat's feet just because they need to show it, has no right to show the animal.

Educate yourself first on the topic, then come back and discuss it.

Simba has all his claws. I trim them with a human nail clipper, too.... he's a good kitty and stays still, too. Doesn't exactly LIKE it, but doesn't mind too much, either.

I've always figured that IF he gets out (a more distinct possibility lately, since he got out fairly recently and has been itching to do so again....) he MIGHT just need those to defend himself against anything that might be out there. Like my fried the cellar-kitty.... or a skunk or something.... I would rather have him tear up my couch a little than get slaughtered because he slipped out the door.....

He IS neutered, though.....

I only know one circumstance where declawing was a good idea, and the cat involved had only one eye and kept injuring her person by accident (no depth perception). Poor cat...

So having one eye is a good reason to get declawed because she kept injuring her person by accident? Sounds like her vet office did not support her enough and teach her how to clip some nails. This is called lazy owner syndrome. Sorry, but it is.

You can't ever convince me it's a good idea, I keep getting lamer excuses as time goes on. I am an 8 year veteran LVT and the excuses as the years go by are astounding.

OK, have to slightly disagree with this. If I could have kept Boots clawed, I would have. Even trimming his claws did not keep me from looking like I went through a Cuisinart every time I had to put ointment into his eyes. Trust me, I tried.

Yet another lame excuse. Your cat got punished for something wrong with him, in this case his eyes for some sort of infection.

So instead of learning how to wrap your cat up properly ect.. you get the toes chopped.

Keep them comming people!

Declawing is just plain wrong. If it were simply about removing the nail it *might* be one thing, but they do so much more than that. It's crual and unjust. As Ellen said, would you declaw your child because they scribbled on the wall? Pets are children, not science experiments.

BTW, I have three cats, two of which are polydactyl (meaning they have extra toes - one of them has 8 toes on each of her front paws and 7 on each of the back). When I get hurt or when my furniture gets knicked, I can only blame myself because I haven't trimmed their nails. Call me odd, but I adopted my kitties to love them unconditionally. I figured I could get a new sofa or sweater or comforter if they ruined it.

Ellen, you would love the About Cats forum at http://forums.about.com/ab-cats =) I love your no-nonsense cat lovin' 'tude.

PS - I haven't been here in a while, but Olivia is just gawjus!!

We adopted 2 cats from our local humane society, since we are new at cats, we asked a lot of people a lot of questions. All tell us it is best to declaw cats. So we thought, "okay, we'll do it for them" meaning the cats. But something just kept gnawing at my brain, I couldn't sleep last night thinking about what declawing actually meant. I went to the medical sites, and then came to this one. I thought that is was just like removing my nails, but to see it as removing a knuckle, as an amputation, simply because we didn't want our furniture attacked.... I am glad I got onto all those sites and then this one. Lets just say, I got an inside view, an education if you will on this very subject. When my husband gets home, I will let him know exactly what declawing is, and that our two babies, need not go through this proceedure. We stopped our first cat from scratching, by encouraging his use of the scratching post my husband built for him. Whenever he tried to claw our furniture, we made a loud nasally sound, like a car horn, and he did not like that sound, he stopped immediately, we'd carry him to the post, and we physically took his little paw and rubbed it gently on his post, I would take my own nails and scratch making the scratching sound. Only took him maybe 3 or 4 times, it does take someone a little bit of time to teach the cat appropriate things to scratch. Not a whole lot of time, but it took us a day or two. Same as housebreaking with a box. Okay, I got one very active little earthbound angel running around me, trying to get my attention to play, so its time to wrap this up. Thank you for this site, it helped by educating me. You saved my babies from this fate.
Oh and to address that silly idea about a child writing on a wall, I do love my cats, and my two dogs, and I love our three grown sons, there IS a difference in what is a human child and an animal, we like to treat them all as our babies. Think this one through folks, I had all my animals neutered but the thought of neutering my three sons when they were kids? See? Silly thought to compare animals to humans. Although we love them with all our hearts, we don't expect to put them through grade school, or graduate school, we don't expect them to join the military, which one of our sons did, we don't expect them to bring home perspective girlfriends to marry, see where I am going with this? More power to those who do think they are human, but this is my opinion, if I may post it, we love our animals, with all of our hearts, we thanked the humane society for allowing us to adopt these wonderful earthbound angels, Our sons grew up, they call at night, I never expect my cats or dogs to call us up at night...if they did, I'd have to call Animal Planet's channel! I thank God for giving us the thoughts in our heads on those days, where we had a nagging feeling to go to the shelter. I guess HE knew we needed to hook up, and we thank HIM we got them! Happy trails and happy tails to everyone out there.