Re: Is De-clawing a US thing?

excuse me that should have read "if a cat owner was"

"Wendy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The biggest difference between here (US) and the UK, at least, is in the UK
cats are permitted to roam freely. In the US there is increasing pressure to
keep cats indoors exclusively. (To make it clear I do not declaw my cats.)
Vets, adoption organizations and Municipalities put pressure on people to
keep the cats indoors. Cats will be cats, they will scratch somewhere. Cats
don't instinctively take to the scratching post like they do a litter box. I
can understand how an owner faced with a cat that is ripping apart their
home and not having the information they need might turn to declawing as a
solution to the problem.

 The solution here isn't to let the cats roam freely unless one lives out in
the country where there isn't the traffic, poisons or demon spawn children
etc. The solution is to educate cat owners early on to the products
available to encourage cats to scratch on appropriate things. I wish the
vets and adoption organizations would pass out information on this as a
matter of course. The vets could even make a buck off of it if they sold
these products like some do food and flea control. I think if a cat owner
were to get this information from a reliable source they would be more
willing to try behavior modification. I know I was skeptical about things
like the sticky tape and sprays until I heard from people here who have used
them successfully.




"Matt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I had never heard about it either before this newsgroup. Declawing is
illegal in Germany and I have never seen a declawed cat over here.
Looking at my cats and how skillfully they use their claws for all
kinds of stuff (defense, eating, climbing etc...) I think it is a very
cruel practice. There is millions of cats over here that have their
claws and there is no problems which in my opinion puts the whole
procedure into doubt.....