TulsaPets Magazine September 2021

20 TulsaPets • September/October 2021 Scratching Out Elective Declawing Some DVMs Across the Country Choose to Opt Out of This Problematic Procedure By Anna Holton-Dean T his past December, Animal Rescue Foundation of Tulsa (ARF) received an urgent message regarding a female “feral” cat named Phoebe, whose owner was moving to a long-term care facility. ARF’s Cat Foster Coordinator Laura May Chapman, who has fostered hundreds of cats and dogs, arrived to find the situation was quite different from what was described. “The original message I received was along the lines of, ‘We have this female cat who is feral, living completely separat- ed from everyone and all the pets in the owner’s house who needs some place to go.’ Thinking she was truly feral, I have options outside of ARF to place shop and barn cats with folks looking for working cats who do not want to be touched or handled,” Chapman says.  Phoebe wasn’t feral at all. She was under- socialized from lack of interaction, locked in a room alone—but not feral. “Then I was told she was declawed,” Chapman says. “She definitely cannot be a shop or barn cat at that point with access to the outdoors.”  Phoebe refused to use the litter box, wouldn’t climb and couldn’t play. She seemed to be a “jerk of a foster cat,” but there was more to her story. Chapman reached out to several vets regarding Phoebe’s declaw. Assessments and X-rays revealed astounding results. Chapman explained the truth behind Phoebe’s behavioral problems in a Facebook post: “After being surrendered for being a ‘feral cat only meant for an outdoor barn home away from people’ because she was so awful to her previous owner, I quickly came to realize that something was amiss with my newly rescued foster cat. “This poor girl was declawed at an early age, and now after living with a botched declawed surgery for almost 10 YEARS, we can clearly see advanced arthritis and trauma in her paws and wrists from a quick X-ray. Her constantly nimble ‘high heel’ shuffle is due to potential bone fragments left in the tips of her toes from being declawed and the advanced wrist arthritis from not walking properly for years. “Well, no wonder my jerk foster cat wants to bite everyone sporadically!” All Chapman can do is help Phoebe man- age as best as possible with a daily regime of medication. “Because of her long-term ‘condition,’ she is not a candidate for corrective surgery as she is advanced in her age, her arthritis is horrible and her muscles have atrophied,” Chapman says. “She simply would not recover from surgery, and it could make things worse. “I truly believe she would have been a much happier cat and lived a more fulfilled life if she had not been declawed. She is most likely a permanent foster of mine at this point.”  Discontinuing the Practice of Declawing Unfortunately, Phoebe’s story is not unique. As many cats suffer complications from declawing procedures, more and more veterinary practitioners are choosing not to perform the surgery. According to the Humane Society of the United States, declawing is already outlawed in dozens of countries and seven of the 10 Canadian provinces, and the U.S. is starting to catch up. Ten U.S. cities now prohibit the procedure, and in 2019, New York became the first state in the nation to ban elective declawing. In February of this year, VCA United States animal hospitals, owned by Mars Veterinary Health, announced they were discontinuing elective declawing at all 2,000 practices.