Following the example of the city of West Hollywood, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Monica are considering enacting ordinances banning the declawing of cats, a practice, known as onychectomy or flexor tendonectomy
In 2003 West Hollywood banned declawing, except for medical reasons. The ordinance was challenged by the the California Veterinary Medical Association representing more than 6,000 vets in California. Meanwhile, the American Veterinary Medical Association agrees that declawing should not be considered as a routine or preventive procedure.
The organization’s president, Dr. Mark Nunez believes that decision to declaw a cat should “be made in consultation with their veterinarian.” As such, the organization opposes a ban at the local level. The ordinance was overturned by the court but reinstated by the Appellate Court. The California Supreme Court later refused to hear arguments in the case.
Santa Monica council member Kevin McKeown stated that the practice was “an unacceptable act of animal cruelty.”
The issue became urgent after Governor Schwartenegger recently signed a law giving the state authority over scope-of-practice issues which would prevent counties and cities from enacting ordinances banning medical procedures as of January 1, 2010. The state law was sponsored by the same California Veterinary Medical Association which opposed the West Hollywood ordinance. In San Francisco, the measure is opposed by the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals which argues that politicians shouldn’t regulate veterinary procedures (Note: The organization opposes declawing in general).
The procedure averages some $250. According to a recent study, 25% of cats are declawed. Since 34% of the US population owns cats, and there are approximately 34 million people in California, we can estimate that there are some 11.6 million cats in California, of which 25%, or 2.9 million will be declawed. At $250 a cat (i.e., $725 million) , it is obvious why the California Veterinary Medical Association actively lobbies against a ban.
Unlike most mammals, who walk on the sole of their feet or paws, cats are digitigrade, meaning they walk on their toes. A cat’s claws have thus evolved to be used for balance, exercise, and for stretching the muscles in their legs, backs, and shoulders by digging their claws and pulling back. A cat’s toes help its paws meet the ground at a precise angle to keep everything properly aligned. That’s because a cat’s claws are not nails, as is a human fingernail, but rather is part of the lasts bone of the cat’s toes, known as the distal phalanx.
When the claws are removed, a cat’s paws meet the ground at an unnatural angle, causing back pain similar to that experiencing by a man or a woman wearing badly fitting shoes. That’s because, to prevent the growth of a vestigial claw, a vet musts amputate the entire distal phalanx at the joint. This includes bones, nerves, joint capsule, collateral ligaments and the extensor and flexor tendons. Declawing thus involves 10 separate and painful amputations of the third phalanx up to the last joint of each toe.
This would be equivalent to cutting off each of your fingers at the last joint!
Like any surgery, the amputation of a cat’s claws is not without possible complications both physical and behavioral. These range from excruciating pain (for the cat), damage to the radial nerve, hemorrhage (a fairly common occurrence), bone chips preventing healing, painful regrowth of deformed claws invisible to the eye (i.e., inside the paw), chronic back, shoulder, and leg muscle pain as the muscle weaken from lack of exercise, lameness due to wound infection or footpad laceration, “death” of the second phalanx, and abscesses associated with the retention of portions of the third phalanx. Of course, there is also the very real danger of disability or death caused by anesthesia. In two studies published in peer-review veterinary journals, 50% of the cats were found to have complications immediately following surgery while 19.8% developed complications after their release from the vet.
Some cats are so shocked that their personalities change. Cats previously lively and friendly can become withdrawn and introverted. Others, deprived of their primary means of defense, become fearful or aggressive. Cats can also become adverse to using their litter box associating the pain of covering their excrement with the box itself. This often leads their owners to surrender the cats to shelters where, often, they are euthanized (According to the World Small Animal Veterinary Association, “Among 218 cats relinquished to a shelter, more (52.4%) declawed than non-declawed cats (29.1%) were reported by owners to have inappropriate elimination problems.”).
Declawing is considered inhumane in many countries of the world. For example, the European Council’s Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals prohibits declawing. England, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Norway and Sweden all have enacted laws expressly prohibiting declawing.
