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Declawing cats is one of the most common elective veterinary procedures performed in the United States. It’s estimated that between 20 – 25% of all cats living in U.S. households (approximately 20 million) are currently declawed.
For many years, declawing was seen as a simple, routine procedure that was neither harmful nor painful. Most people viewed declawing as a type of permanent nail trim that made it impossible for their cat to scratch furniture, climb drapes, or inadvertently scratch a human family member. For this reason, many veterinarians offered declaws as part of bundled spay-and-neuter “packages” for cats.
But here’s the thing: a declaw is not just the removal of the visible part of the cat’s claw. In fact, declawing cats involves the actual amputation of the tips of all 10 of the cat’s toes.
Take a look at your own fingers. The lowest finger bone (P1) goes from the bottom of the finger (where it attaches to your hand) to your first knuckle. The second bone (P2) goes from your first knuckle to your second knuckle. The third bone, P3, is the one that extends from your second knuckle to the tip of your finger and includes your finger nail. It’s this bone that is completely removed during a cat declaw.
When P3 is removed, the surrounding ligaments, tendons, nerves, and joint capsule are taken out along with it – and this can end up causing major problems for the cat.

What A Declaw Looks Like
There are several different techniques that can be used for declawing cats. The most common method is amputating each of the cat’s 10 (or more, if she’s got mitten paws) toes using a scalpel or a sterilized guillotine-style nail clipper.
Another technique is using a laser to cut through the tissue by heating it up to temperatures so high that the tissue vaporizes. The third method is called a “tendonectomy”, in which the tendon that controls the claw in each toe is completely severed so, although the claw is still present, it can’t be extended to scratch.
After all the claws and surrounding bone are removed, the resulting open holes over each of the cat’s toes are either sutured or glued shut with surgical glue, and the cat’s paws are bandaged tightly to minimize heavy bleeding, which can be common for up to several days afterwards.
All of these procedures come with risks. It’s for this reason that the American Veterinary Medical Association states “Onychectomy (declawing) is an amputation and should be regarded as major surgery.”
Problems Caused By Declawing Cats
There are several long-lasting physical and psychological effects on cats who have been surgically declawed.
Post-Declawing Pain Syndrome:
Not only is the declaw procedure itself extremely painful (the AVMA categorizes pain from a declaw as severe, and some veterinary researchers claim it can surpass the pain of both neutering and spaying), but the pain can last for years – sometimes even for the lifetime of the cat. Because the nerves have been severed, many declawed cats appear to experience pain similar to neuropathic pain in people, who describe it as tingling, burning, throbbing, or “electrical shocks” in their bodies.
Additionally, small pieces of bone can be left behind during the procedure. These bone fragments can become incredibly painful, pressing into tissue and nerves.

Changes to the Cat’s Basic Anatomy:
Cats are digitigrades, which means they walk on their toes instead of on the soles of their feet. Amputating the tips of their toes drastically alters the conformation of their feet and their overall gait, which over time can lead to chronic arthritis, neuralgia, degenerative joint disease, back pain, and balance impairment.
Cats who have been declawed essentially have to relearn how to walk so that their weight is redistributed. Gradually, they can experience progressive weakening of the muscles of the shoulders, back and legs.
Behavioral Issues:
According to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, declawed cats who live with other cats are 3 times more likely to fail to use the litter box appropriately than cats who still have their claws. This could be due to the pain felt when using a litter box with traditional granular litter. Another theory is that once declawed cats realize they can no longer mark with their claws, they begin urinating in other areas of the house to mark their territory.
Additionally, declawing cats can make them more likely to bite – presumably because they feel more vulnerable when they no longer have their claws to defend themselves.
Surgical Complications:
Complications from declaws can include severe pain, heavy bleeding, infection, tissue necrosis (death of the tissue), lameness, back pain, nerve damage, and the formation of bone spurs.
Additionally, since a cat’s claw grows right out of the bone, if a piece of the bone is accidentally left inside the cat’s toe, a partial nail can develop and begin to grow outward through the skin.
Why Cats Should Keep Their Claws
For cat parents who are frustrated by their cat’s scratching behavior, it’s important to remember that scratching is a completely normal behavior for cats! Kittens instinctively begin scratching around 8 weeks of age. Whenever cats reach up to scratch a vertical surface, it not only helps remove the old, dead layers of their claws and keeps the new claws underneath sharp, it also stretches their muscles, relieves stress, and just plain feels good!

Cats use their claws for exercise, balance, stretching and toning the muscles in their shoulders and legs, capturing prey, defending themselves against predators, and marking territory. Claws are not useless parts of any cat’s anatomy – cats were born with claws for a reason, and removing them has numerous detrimental effects.
Alternatives To Declawing
If your cat is scratching things in your house, it’s much better to provide her with alternatives rather than resorting to declawing. To discourage scratching in inappropriate places (and to minimize any damage caused by sharp claws), try the following:
Provide Other Appropriate Surfaces to Scratch
As cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy likes to say, “For every no, provide a yes.” If your cat is scratching your furniture, simply offer her something that’s even more fun to scratch. This could be:
- Scratching posts (some are scented with catnip)
- Kitty condos
- Cardboard boxes
- Logs or pieces of lumber
- Old car floor mats
- Carpet remnants
Some cats prefer tall, vertical scratching posts, while others enjoy horizontal surfaces like mats. Find what your cat likes best and make sure there are numerous options for her placed around the areas where she likes to scratch.
Keep Your Cat’s Claws Trimmed
Although the thought of trimming your cat’s nails may be a little intimidating, many cats can be trained to tolerate nail trims. You can use a pair of nail trimmers made just for cats (I prefer these over human nail clippers, as they provide a cleaner cut and won’t split the claw). Over time, you can desensitize your cat to having her feet touched by gently and regularly stroking her paws, then progress to mini paw massages.
There’s an excellent article from cat behaviorist Pam Johnson-Bennett on how to trim your cat’s claws that offers excellent tips for making nail-trimming for your cat relatively stress-free!
Use Claw Covers
Claw covers (such as Soft Paws) are soft, non-toxic vinyl nail caps that can be placed over your cat’s claws to prevent her from doing any damage while scratching. Once applied to the nails, the covers stay on for approximately 4-6 weeks, and will fall off on their own once your cat’s claws grow to a certain length. Many cats tolerate these fairly well, and the caps don’t interfere with their ability to extend their claws.

Use Deterrents to Keep Cats Away From Certain Areas
There are several things you can use to discourage your cat from scratching in specific areas of your home. These can include:
- Double-sided sticky tape applied to surfaces your cat is scratching (cats dislike the texture)
- Aluminum foil (cats don’t like the feel or the sound)
- Bubble wrap (can be taped or draped on furniture)
- Plastic carpet runners
- Car mats or carpet runners placed with the nub sides up
- Motion-activated air sprayers
- Citrus sprays (cats don’t like the smell)
A Big Deal
So what’s the big deal about declawing cats?
Turns out, there are plenty of great reasons not to declaw your cat. You’ll avoid the possibility of a lifetime of pain, back problems, potential behavioral issues, and numerous other physical and emotional side effects. Your cat gets to keep all her toes intact, and you won’t have to put her through an extremely painful and traumatic surgical procedure that has already been banned in numerous countries across the globe for being inhumane and unnecessary.
So please consider…save a paw, don’t declaw!
What are your thoughts about declawing? Have you ever had a cat who experienced negative effects from being declawed? Please tell us about it in the comments below!
Great article. You hit all the highlights about declawing. Thank you for doing a wonderful job of educating cat owners and for advocating on behalf of cats who have no voice of their own.
Thank you, Lynn!
Thank you for this great educational article! So many cat owners don’t understand what exactly declawing entails & hopefully through education we can stop this inhumane procedure. To many people also believe that declawing saves lives or keeps shelter rates low. I think people are not aware of how many declawed cat have been abandoned or surrendered due to behavior issues stemming from the declaw. Thousands of declawed cats are waiting in shelters waiting to be adopted but sadly most will probably be euthanized, so declawing dose not save lives nor reduces shelter rates.
Thank you again for this great informative article!
Hi Kim, thank you. You bring up an excellent point about declawing helping to keep cats out of shelters, which unfortunately is not the case. Just today I pulled up the website pets.overstock.com, and on this website alone there are currently 1,216 declawed cats available for adoption; so declawed cats are definitely finding their way into shelters on a daily basis. Although there may be very rare cases where declawing would be a last resort if the only other option was euthanasia, in the vast majority of cases declaws are not a last resort… they are a perceived convenience.
Thank you for writing!
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Thanks so much for this. I’m curious to see how the bill to ban declawing in New York goes. If I remember correctly it’s banned in Los Angeles & some California cities (they do however have a state wide ban declawing of wild & exotic cats), but New York might be the first to pass a state wide ban, and perhaps other states will follow. Thanks again for this, there’s still such a need for more education on the effects declawing has on cats.
Hi Jen! Yep, currently it’s illegal to declaw a cat in these CA cities: San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Culver City, Burbank, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills. It will be interesting to see what happens in New York!
Yes those complications can occur…however….complications can arise from any type of surgery. Working in the veterinary for over 15 years, I have NEVER seen a complication from a declaw surgery. I have seen complications from other surgeries: spays, neuters, tumor removals, dentals and opthalmic surgeries, to name a few. Pets have a wonderful way of adapting to the change that occurs in their life. For example, a limb amputation. I’ve witnessed pets waking up from anesthesia and “figuring out” how to walk again in just a few steps. They are very resilient! To declaw or not should depend on the cat’s lifestyle and what the owner chooses to do. Putting soft claws on your cat’s nails is more aggravating and bothersome than you think. Owners try this method and most cats don’t like it. All I can say is talk to your veterinarian and get the proper information before making your decision. You can read articles that are tailored to not declaw your cat and read articles that are. Like any topic that is under controversy, you will find pros and cons. But it’s best to speak with a professional.
Hi Eileen, thank you for your feedback! I wish I could say I had the same experience with cat declaws during my time in veterinary medicine, but sadly I saw several negative issues arising from declaws – beginning with them waking up after surgery. I used to dread recovering declawed cats because they were obviously in so much pain when they woke up. Even with pain medication on board, many would flail their front legs and cry, sometimes for so long that they eventually collapsed from exhaustion. Although their feet were heavily bandaged after surgery, in some cats the bleeding afterwards was so severe it would seep through several layers of bandage material, and we would have to remove the post-surgical bandages and re-wrap them less than 24 hours after surgery (which was excruciating for the cats). And for anyone who might be wondering if the clinic where I worked was sub-par, we were one of the highest-rated, most respected veterinary hospitals in the area. That’s just how it was.
Sadly, most of the complications I saw firsthand from declaw procedures weren’t typically those that manifested immediately after surgery. They often happened months or years later, with cats developing litter box avoidance issues because it caused pain or discomfort for them to dig in the litter box (even with “softer” litters like newspaper pellets), or mysterious lameness that would come and go. My mother’s cat, Simon, who was already declawed when she rescued him, was a 17-pound Bombay (he wasn’t overweight, he was just solid muscle and about the size of a Maine Coon), whose declaw had been so badly done that at the age of 4 years he already had trouble walking. The family vet confirmed that his intermittent lameness was due to bone fragments being left behind after his declaw.
I do agree that animals are resilient, and they often do quite well after limb amputations. The difference is that limb amputations are always medically necessary surgeries. You will never see a veterinarian perform a limb amputation for any reason other than to save the life of an animal or prevent the animal from suffering severe chronic pain in the future. Declaws are not necessary for the health and well-being of cats; in almost all cases they are done purely for the convenience of the owner. It’s interesting to ask ourselves what we do when dogs exhibit behaviors that we don’t like, such as destructive chewing. It would be unheard of for a veterinarian to pull all the teeth of a young healthy dog to keep him from chewing up his owner’s furniture. Rather, the vet would recommend behavior modification so the dog could learn to divert his focus away from furniture and onto something more acceptable. Yet many people think nothing of amputating the tips of all 10 toes on a young healthy cat to make sure that their furniture and draperies remain intact.
Fortunately, the controversy surrounding declawing is slowly changing as more and more research comes out supporting the fact that 1) Declawing cats does not necessarily keep them out of shelters, and 2) Many veterinarians are beginning to support the idea that declawing does not fit the definition of a medically necessary, humane procedure (“Do No Harm”). Several veterinary organizations, such as the American Association of Feline Practitioners (you can read their statement here) are also putting out statements saying that declawing should never be routine, and should only be “an option of last resort” for veterinarians and cat owners. There are currently 28 countries around the world that have banned declawing altogether, and the hope for many is that the U.S. will eventually follow suit.
So yes, there are differences of opinions on both sides, and you will find numerous articles on both. But before deciding whether or not to declaw your cat, I would encourage readers to do their homework, and be diligent. With any luck, the kitten or cat you have welcomed into your family will be with you for many years to come – so this is not a decision to ever be made lightly.
Thank you for this great article. My brother and sister-in-law just adopted a new kitten. I begged and pleaded for them not to declaw. I sent articles from credible websites explaining the procedures in detail and the cons of having a cat declawed. Unfortunately I was unable to convince them. Any advice on how to sway people AWAY from declawing? Thanks!
I thought it was super interesting to learn about behavioral changes in cats who are declawed. I did not know before that if a cat is declawed, they will often urinate to mark their territory. If I had a cat, I would want to remember this when I get my cat declawed.
Every cat we have had for the past 30 years has been declawed. All great pets, all lived 12-16 years old. None exhibited any of the long term symptoms or behavioral issues that the anti-declaw group refers to.
This is a decision that should be between the pet owner and veterinarian. Every situation is different.
Indoor cats don’t need claws, but claws need cats to cause mischief.
Very much informative blog post. Thank you for sharing the information.