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When you get your animal "fixed" your preventing the population growth of homeless animals.

Where I live, surrounded by forest, my cat's need their claws for defense against wild animals.

No benefit to the cat, plenty of benefits for lazy folks who don't think that cats can or should be trained.
It's illegal to declaw cats here and I'm very glad of it. All cats have their claws and funnily enough, people can deal with that.
Personally believe that if people get cats and plan to have their claws taken off then they shouldn't be getting one in the first place.

Spay/Neuter is completely different to declawing. S/N benefits the animal and other animals.

I'm not sure if you know this, but declawing removes the first part of the digit. Look at your finger. See how it's joined in three parts? Imagine if your finger was sliced off at the first line. Then imagine what life would be like if you didn't have that part of your finger. You wouldn't grip as well, type as well, eat as well, or be as happy. Think about how acrobatic cats are. They can't grip, climb, hunt, or run as well. How nice is that?

I hate people who get there cat declawed! It's so cruel! They say oh it's ok it doesnt hurt them at all There pulling out the nail!

I'm going to play, as my old teacher used to say, the "Devil's advocate" in this case.

First of all, I'm not fond of declawing in general. If it doesn't have to be done, don't do it.

But, has anyone on this thread considered situations where it was necessary? When my cat was brought in from being an outdoor cat (and don't give me anything about, "Aw, you've restricted a cat that should run free to a little house!" - He has always wanted inside and does not want back out), we had him declawed. We were at the time living in an apartment. Damage to the property by him would have meant two possible things:

1. We have to pay for the replacement of all of it immediately, since it isn't our property. My parents were divorcing and we were going through lawyer expenses and such at the time, which meant we couldn't risk that.

2. We could get kicked out of the apartment if he caused too much trouble (they have a right to do that), and have nowhere at all the live.

Also, we had a parakeet (and still do). My cat had initially shown a bit of...let's say... interest in her, and she had almost lost her life as it was a couple years before from an eager dog bite to the foot. The claws of a cat that had already killed many birds, chipmunks, rabbits, and who knows what else would not be any better.

Our cat was declawed with laser surgery as well. Laser surgery is cleaner, quicker, and decreases both blood loss and pain to the animal. Without the declawing, there literally would have been nowhere for the cat to go: we had moved into the apartment from another house, and he would have either been lost or killed by traffic/people outside in an unfamiliar territory.


Now, our second cat, Jack, is not declawed. He has wrecked up one of our loveseats, but we can't afford to replace it at the moment (we're still paying off the mattress we had to replace due to his piddle xd ). Declawing for him was actually something we did not want at first for him at all, seeing as my cat had been established for years in this house, and we knew that it was best for Jack to have a little better defense if he was to get a bit of respect. As Jack is young, he is still able to learn the limits of when to and to not use his claws.

As for the scratching post thing, a family like us can hardly afford to place those things on every corner where the cats decide to scratch. We're still saving up money to get them the rest of their booster shots at the moment, let alone a dozen plastic and carpet poles around the living room.

This is where I would advocate training the cat, instead of just having a part of it chopped off. No better than debarking a dog because it makes noise, in my opinion.
Training cats to leave household items alone is not difficult. We have two trained cats. Every person I know who has cats and gives a stuff about their furnature has trained there's. Training cats, even older cats, is not as difficult as people like to make out.
Declawing is not legal in my country and people cope just fine- why would it be different elsewhere? What is so different that makes it necessary to make surgical alterations to an animal that have no medical benefit? Sorry, doesn't wash with me.

In regards to the bird, it is the teeth that are the big killer of prey. Claws are just a holding device. Declawed cats can and will kill, especially when they are given access to prey species.

I'm afraid that outside of medical necessity [and not owner conveniancy] I think it is completely barbaric.

The only question I would like to ask is when you suggest that I would have trained the cat? In the time my parents announced the divorce, we spent our little time left in the house packing and finding a new place to live. My cat was outside at the time. We could not bring him in until we moved, which was the only time we would have had to "train" him. My bird had been in the house for years, and there was little, if any, way to separate them in the household while the cat was taught things.

As for the attacking with the teeth, my cat had made a bad habit outside of batting and clawing animals to death. I'd seen it with numerous chipmunks, sadly. The moment they'd stand and walk away, he'd jump on them again. The most he grabbed it with his teeth was when I tried to stop him, when he picked it up to drag it out of my reach. Our cats' first instincts have always been to bat at things with their paws, not grab them with their teeth.

As for violence, I certainly can't say that it made my cat moer violent. If anything, our other, not-declawed cat is more aggressive. If anything, my cat is the less aggressive and more level-headed of the two, and he adjusted to house life much more quickly than our other cat. That, however, probably has more to do with personality.