Why we decided to stop declawing cats – Interview with two no-declaw clinics
Last updated on October 27th, 2017 at 10:42 pm
There are a few veterinary clinics in Montreal who have decided to take a solid no-declaw stance and have stopped performing declaws. The Pierrefonds Animal Hospital and the Centre Vétérinaire Riv Sud are two such veterinary clinics. I have reached out to them for an insider view of declawing and why they have taken this major step to stop practicing it. The good news is that both clinics report a growing awareness among their clients about what declawing is. These clients are very willing to accept the many humane alternatives. However, there still seems to be that tiny percentage who will insist, but they now happily decline them. Eventually with persistence and education, hopefully these requests will be a thing of the past. Below is my interview with Anita Cuisinier DVM and Susan Brown DVM.
The Pierrefonds Animal Hospital has staff with experience ranging from new graduates, to vets with 5-10 years experience who have worked in other clinics and hospitals, to hospital owners with 20 odd years experience.
Anita Cuisinier is Australian and graduated from the University of Sydney in 2009. Declawing is illegal in Australia, so it was a big shock for her to learn about it when she moved to Quebec five years ago. In her first job in a small animal clinic, performing declaws was a condition of her employment. Luckily for her, she now works for more morally conscientious employers. Her main passions are shelter medicine and surgery, and she works for the Montreal SPCA, Pierrefonds Animal Hospital and the Centre Veterinaire Laval. In addition to this she still finds time to volunteer in spay/neuter clinics in Native American communities for the past four years with Chiots Nordique, a not-for-profit organization.
Sarah Brown graduated from the Faculté de médecine vétérinaire de l’Université de Montréal in June 2011. She went on to perform an internship in pet medicine and surgery at the Hôpital Vétérinaire Rive-Sud, where she has worked since June 2012.
In your career have you witnessed any adverse side effects in declawed cats, if so, what was the main side-effect? (litter box issues, chronic pain, arthritis etc)
AC:
It’s always hard to state that illness or undesirable behaviours are unequivocally due to declawing, because all the commonly noted issues such as inappropriate urination due to litter box avoidance, arthritis etc. can of course be seen in any cats. However, in my experience and that of my colleagues, the vast majority of cats that we see in hospital that are considered highly ‘aggressive’ (ie fearful, but that is a whole other discussion) have been declawed. I have the impression that these cats are reacting to previous traumatic memories of their declaw surgery, and become dangerous biters because they have no other way to defend themselves. Certainly when we see cats for aggression issues, a higher proportion of them have been declawed. I believe the aggression is a result of the declawing and not the other way around, since the vast majority are operated on very young in life, usually around 3-4 months of age, before any ‘personality’ problems would arise. This would be the most common side effect that I see. Others include botched surgeries leaving painful bone remnants behind, uncontrolled bleeding from cats that are discharged from hospital too soon after surgery, declawed cats that refuse to jump or use litter trays and extreme paw sensitivity and pain, even many years later.
SB:
Declawing can cause acute or long term complications. Acute pain and infection are the most common complications after surgery. Some cats may develop behavioral problems, chronic pain or persistent lameness.
What made you decide not to declaw at your clinic?
AC:
As animal lovers and advocates for cats, Pierrefonds Animal Hospital vets have been uncomfortable about declawing for as long as most of us have been practicing. However, until now our concern was for the cats that were having declaw surgeries done elsewhere with insufficient pain control and old-fashioned techniques. We would therefore perform the surgery for our clients, but only under very stringent conditions, which included:
- an extended hospital stay, multimodal pain relief
- 24-hour monitoring as befits any amputation.
Ultimately we all agreed that even with this much care, we were no longer comfortable with putting our patients through surgery that did not benefit them. We are still extremely concerned for the cats whose owners will take them elsewhere to be declawed, but we feel that attitudes in Quebec will not change until we make a stand for our furry friends.
SB:
Declawing is a surgical procedure that prevents cats from expressing normal behaviours and causes pain. In almost all cases, it is not a medically necessary procedure. We want to provide the best care possible to our patients, so we prefer to educate cat owners and provide them with alternatives to declawing. With proper training, it is possible to positively reinforce the use of a scratching post and minimize unwanted behaviors. Temporary synthetic nail caps can also be used during the training period. We teach our clients how to regularly trim their cat’s claws.
On average, how many requests does your clinic receive for declawing?
AC:
Requests can vary from 1-2 per week to 4-5 per day.
SB:
We stopped performing this procedure last Fall 2015 and most of my clients seem to be happy with the alternatives to declawing. I have had very few requests for declawing during pediatric appointments. Our clients can also get detailed information and answers to their questions on the phone, given by our veterinary technicians.
Do you think most people are more aware of the risks of the procedure, or do they still think it’s just a manicure?
AC:
It seems to us that the majority of clients are more educated about the reality of declaw surgery than they were a few years ago. Responsible pet owners who take their pets for regular check-ups are already suspicious of the procedure and are happy to try more humane alternatives. Sadly, however, we have frequently been witness to ultimatums by family members who will only accept a cat on the condition that they be declawed, or conditions of rent imposed by landlords that push cat owners towards the surgery.
SB:
Compared to a few years ago, I feel there in an increasing awareness that declawing is amputation of the last phalanx of each digit.
When you inform clients about all the risks and the alternatives to declawing, do you know whether they go somewhere else to have them declawed anyway?
AC:
Although we don’t have any exact data or means of following up with clients who don’t come back after we have explained our no-declaw policy, we can usually tell when clients have their minds set on having the procedure done, and therefore presume they go elsewhere. I would estimate that this occurs in around 10% of cases.
SB:
I don’t think so. We see most of our pediatric patients for spay or neuter when they are a little older (around 6 months old), and most of them still have their claws!
Is the province of Quebec anywhere near outlawing this practice, like it has outlawed tail docking and ear cropping in dogs recently?
AC:
The Ordre des Médecins Vétérinaires du Québec, who manage our licenses to practice veterinary medicine, have already published a statement strongly advising cat owners to consider all options carefully before proceeding with declaw surgery. Since the OMVQ considers onychectomy (declaw surgery) as not medically necessary, and is working towards increasing public awareness of the risks of complications associated with the practice, we are hopeful that declaws will one day be just a bad memory for us all.
Thank you to Anita Cuisinier and Sarah Brown for providing some insight and shedding light on this matter. Bravo for taking a stand to help our furry friends who don’t have a voice to speak. Future generations of very happy cats will be thanking you that they have their claws intact!
Anita Cuisinier, DVM
BPsych (Hons), BVSc
Pierrefonds Animal Hospital
Sarah Brown DVM
Vétérinarian – Emergency and general medicine
Centre Vétérinaire Rive-Sud
Great interview, thank you! It’s good to know there are vets out there who actually care for the well-being of cats!
Yes, so good to know! In total there are around six no-declaw vet practices in Quebec. It’s a start!
If Canada’s national vetinary association came down on declawing, this barbaric practice would be criminalized and stopped in its tracks.
Absolutely! They should be taking a stronger stance on declawing. As long as their position statement states that the decision ultimately still rests with the owner, declawing is going to continue. Twenty eight other countries and counting, think it’s cruel and inhumane, and in Canada and the U.S. it’s still debatable. Makes no sense.
Great interviews. One day declawing will be banned in the USA and Canada as it is in a great number of humane-thinking countries around the world. In our opinion there is no reason to debate whether declawing is cruel- it is an inhumane and brutal surgery causing cats pain and emotional distress. Thanks for this extremely important post!
Vet clinics can have the best tools needed for declawing cats. Really important to do it right.
There is no right way to guillotine the first digit of any animals bones in their paws. The nerve damage you’re causing them alone will lead to a good probability that they will experience a varying degree of pain for the rest of their lives every single time they:
•Have to bear weight on their butchered paws … Sooo every time they’re mobile..
•Every time they use the litter box and need to dig
And let’s not forget that research has most recently discovered that a good percentage of these poor babes experience phantom limb pain (which never goes away)
… And all because people care more about their furniture than the innocent cat they chose to bring into their home
Nice article for veterinary knowledge. keep it up. I am against declawing cats.
Veterinary Anesthesiologist here & fortunate enough to reside and work in New York [Rochester – Not ‘NYC’.. So I am a two hour drive from the Canadian border & have some phenomenally amazing friends up there!!] .. I will admit I cried when I heard that we were the second state to make declawing illegal.. New Jersey being the first.
It was also a relief because at my practice we had already made all clients aware a couple years prior of our own hospital’s policy to refuse to declaw.
I actually decided to begin ordering in claw caps and my receptionists created a nice display out in the waiting room and my surgical techs wrote up some information the CSR’s then took and made much more palatable to look at and made people WANT to stop and read about the *NEW DEAL* we were offering all cat owners! (Along with a PG13 / watered down version of what the human equivalent of declawing a cat was like & even more importantly all the long term effects that they suffer from for the rest of their lives..)
And so basically, we sold claw caps to anyone that was a client of ours (and up to date on their rabies vaccination & annual exam) @ wholesale cost, so we do not profit off of them-AND- We stopped charging a technician appt fee to have them applied *professionally* as I was reading so many horror stories about owners doing them on their own at home and then they would utilize too much glue and when pressed on it would overflow out of the claw cap and move up into the nail bed and get on their fur and in a dozen different scenarios that I just stumbled across accidentally the owners absolutely HATED claw caps because those extreme cases caused their poor cats to be in EXCRUCIATING pain & incapable of retracting their claws due to all the dried up excess glue as well as it pulling on little tufts of paw fur that was super glued INTO the claw cap and, again, causing them to be in excruciating discomfort 24/7 as it was tugging on their skin so horribly..
So I reached out to a few. Only 2 got back to me but I told them my story and how I was trying to come up with some sort of plan to both help educate our client – new & long term – but also give them some incentive to make that “leap of faith” with our practice .. And it just made no sense to do all of this marketing of a humane alternative as well as campaigning to educate all pet owners just to, in the end, almost punish them for doing the right thing by not helping to make sure that their cats have them applied PROPERLY and then for the next month their owners can see ACCURATELY how phenomenal they are as an alternative!
I sincerely think that the many companies that create these claw caps now – as there are a couple knock offs to the original company, They truly need to partner with Veterinary Practices, Shelters/Rescues, heck! Even Petsmart because they now have their mobile clinic that supposedly staffs a full time vet and at least one (licensed) tech! So they could apply them just as easily as my colleagues do! But they need to offer owners buying their products a deal because I sincerely believe that if they sold them at the price they already do but began advertising & placing ads all over their website and socials that if you purchase their product, they will make sure that your cat gets them properly placed on their claws by one of the X number of animal hospitals they have partnered with to “pick up the tab” and cover the application fee so that the owner doesn’t have to spend any more money once they purchase them.
It has been a MASSIVE success for our practice! We have decided to continue to offer it indefinitely!