Points on Pets

Is It Time to End Cat Declawing?

Recently, Maryland joined New York in outlawing cat declawing, a procedure also known as Onychectomy. In addition to those two States, several localities have also said “no more” to this operation. Should Virginia and Alexandria consider similar laws?

For most our centuries with cats, we wanted them fully armed and operational to eliminate vermin and varmints. A declawed cat made as much sense as a dog that couldn’t bark or herd, or a horse that couldn’t bear a rider or pull a wagon. But when cats moved from mainly coworkers to mainly companions, humans established procedures to reflect that change. Some of these practices, like spaying and neutering, remain valued by experts, while declawing has come to be increasingly seen as harmful.

People only developed declawing sometime around 1948, and possibly as part of dogfighting as much as keeping the family wing chair intact. As spaying and neutering countered natural cat behaviors of yowling and spraying, declawing addressed the natural cat behavior to scratch – now inside, in homes with stuffed sofas and lacquered wooden chair legs. A joke in the declawing ban discussion holds that upholsterers, at least, support cats having claws.

The American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AMVA) brief on declawing thoroughly discusses the issue. The strongest pro-declaw argument holds that human guardians who cannot get their cat’s scratching under control may relinquish them, although a study in British Columbia from 2021 found no significant increase in owners giving up their cats after that province’s ban. Despite its appraisal that the issue needs more hard scientific evidence to reach a definitive conclusion, the AVMA “recommends that the procedure only be performed after exhausting other methods of controlling scratching behavior or if it has been determined that the cat’s claws present a human health risk” and also notes bans in several localities, one State (at the time), and the entire European Union. That said, in testimony to the Maryland General Assembly on its ultimately successful declawing ban, the trade association wrote, “We have grave concerns about legislative and regulatory actions that remove the professional judgment of veterinarians in determining when to perform specific veterinary procedures.”

A local vet contacted for this piece could only think of one instance in her experience where medical need required the declawing procedure. “The one I can think of is the polydactyl cat ([that] had 3 thumbs) where I removed two of the three thumbs on both front feet because they were growing directly into his skin and both front feet were very infected,” she wrote.

All existing bans on declawing include a provision for medical necessity.

While it is difficult to find hard numbers on the rate of declawing surgeries, most sources see the procedure falling out of favor among veterinarians. Danielle Bays of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) told the Washington Post, “While the U.S. veterinary community is increasingly opposed to declawing, we can’t continue to wait for the profession to end declawing on its own.” Its position paper declares the group “opposes declawing except for the rare cases when it is necessary for medical purposes, such as the removal of cancerous nail bed