Declawed cats are overly demonized

Please note, I am not saying that declawing is okay! I think we have spread the drawbacks of declawing so intensely, that already declawed cats are looked down on or rejected.

I owned a cat growing up that was declawed on her front paws before we adopted her. She had no ill-effects from it. She was active, used the litterbox, never developed arthritis, had no issues with having her feet touched, etc. She even had so much strength in her toes that she would “scratch” on furniture and still manage to cause damage that looked like it came from actual claws.

Recently, I’ve seen an influx of already declawed cats in shelters and rescues getting passed over for fully clawed cats. People seem to think that ALL declawed cats will have litterbox problems, will be in pain, will be grumpy/mean, etc. because they were declawed.

For example, I saw a post of a girl sobbing because her kitten got injured and medically needed to be declawed in the front, and she was upset that her cat would be in pain forever. Multiple people in the comments were saying to have the kitten euthanized because that would be better than him suffering for the rest of his life. And the rest were discussing how miserable the rest of the his life would be, saying he would never have the same personality and would mean from now on, saying he would be traumatized from people, etc.

I’ve even had people tell me I’m horrible for having adopted a declawed cat because apparently that’s “supporting” the procedure somehow, even though it was done by her previous owners, years before I even met her.

Yes, we need to demonize the declawing procedure, but we should also be clear that not every declawed cat is suffering or will have every single bad side effect. That declawed cats can live happy and healthy lives (even if some require a little extra maintenance). And encourage anyone who wants to get a cat and declaw it, to instead look for an already declawed one in a shelter or a rescue.