Check out declaw.org

It was banned by city ordinance in West Hollywood, California. One of
the most liberal/progressive cities in the country. Hopefully others
will follow and outlaw this horrible, inhumane practice.

I volunteer at a shelter and I do not believe some of these statements
to be correct. I will try to not discuss declawing as a philosophy,
just the above statements.

While a scratching post is much less than half the cost of declawing,
it does not usually produce the desired result by itself. The goal of
most people who declaw is to stop damage to drapes, furniture, etc.
Simply getting a scratching post does not stop the cat from sharpening
on furniture or from climbing drapes.

Stopping that behavior takes a lot of work. The question of whether or
not a person should be forced to do that work is at the center of the
declaw issue and I don't want to get into that here.

I have seen several cats just after declawing and have seen none that
refuse to use the litter pan because of the pain. In "the old days",
prior to ten years ago, the vets said to put shreaded newspaper in the
litter pan because of this issue. That solved the problem until the
stiches were removed.

For the last several years, the vets have used a form of super-glue
instead of stiches. Actually, super-glue was developed for surgical
use and is commonly used in animals and people. That reduced the
discomfort to an extremely low level so the litter box issue is almost
non-existant. I have also observed almost no cats with apparent
discomfort after a month, maximum.

Even the apparent discomfort during the brief time seems quite minor.
I can not even remember seeing any cats who ave stopped using their
paws for defense more than a week or so after declawing.

Even though I see thousands of cats a year, that is a small percentage
of the cat population. That said, I have never actually heard a person
say THEIR cat's personality changed or they stopped using the
litterbox immediately after declawing. I have heard many people say
that they have heard of it, but none that have actually experienced
it, as I stated above.

I use the word immediate because there is a natural change in
personality for kittens in the age range that declawing is typically
done. How do you know that a personality change over the period of
months is from declawing or from a natural progression?

I have seen cats that did not get along well with people. They too
often scratched and bit everyone who they interacted with. Most of
those cats had their claws. I have seen no significant correlation
between negative behavior and clawing/declawing.

I will stop my reply at this point as my goal was to take issue with
these statments, not to debate declawing. The issue of declawing is a
very emotional one and has been, and will continue to be, debated for
ever. There will always be people on both sides of this issue. My
observation is that there are very kind and loving people on both
sides.