Declawed Cats

When looking into the behavior of cats and why they act and do what they do we need to think like a cat. Cats do not do anything out of spite, they do not think or act like humans. Cats act out for deeper reasons whether it is because there is something in the environment that is causing them to feel threatened or insecure. They could also be hurting or they could have some type of illness going on which can cause their behavior. For example a declawed cat that is peeing outside of the box we need to take a look at the litter. Hard clay litter can cause pain especially when trying to move the litter around in the box. Now let's dive a bit into the declawing of a cat. When declawing a cat most people do not think of the harm it can cause and what it actually does to the cats. Declawing is the equivalent of removing all of a human's fingers from the first knuckle. This being said it can cause arthritis later on in life. This also causes cats to become nervous, and irritable. It also can make them unbalanced. It can also cause health issues, such as infection, tissue death, nerve damage, and bone spurs which is arthritis. If your vet does not remove the claw properly they can re-grow and this is very painful. Declawing also causes your cat to stress more. Most people declaw because they are worried about the destruction of their furniture. This is a behavior that can be helped cats do like to scratch things. It is a natural reaction for cats and the best way to redirect and help prevent them from scratching the furniture is by bringing in cat scratchers for them to scratch instead of them scratching your furniture. The cat scratchers are a big help with clawing furniture. You can also bring in cat trees that have areas to scratch which will also help your cat stop scratching your furniture. These tools will help you and your cat for the better. Declawing your cat as I said earlier can cause health problems and it can cause arthritis and joint pain. Which will cause them to be put on medication. Which will only help so much. When you become a cat owner you should always think of your cat and what is best for them. Declawing is a reckless decision, because it can cause problems later on which most people don’t think of and most vets did not know for many years. Nowadays some shelters will have you sign a paper that is an agreement to not declaw the cat you adopt. These shelters know and understand the damage declawing a cat can do. Though now it is illegal in New York, Maryland, Virginia. Texas, Colorado. Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin most other states have not yet been banned declawing. It is important to do research or even ask other cat owners for help and advice. Seeking out help is another tool that will help you and the cat you are planning to bring into your home. When looking for a cat there are shelters that may have cats that are declawed from previous owners. Though the cats they have are on the older side they still would benefit from being adopted and in a forever home. Sometimes it is hard to adopt out the declaw cats because of the issues that it caused the not using the litter box or them being on medicine for their pain and arthritis. This causes potential adopters to think is this really something we want to bring into our home. Most times they decide against it, this can cause these cats to spend their lives in the shelter and to never know a life outside of the shelter. This being said if you still are wanting a declaw cat look in shelters but if you can’t find one you could either keep looking keep going back because shelters are always getting new cats brought in, or you could adopt another cat and use something called soft paws which are fake nails that get glued to their nails. If you don’t want to use the soft paws you can get scratchers and cat towers to help prevent them from scratching your furniture. These tools can really help all of the cat owners out there and any potential cat owners.