UPDATE!
DECEMBER 17, 2020, AAFP ANNOUNCED THAT THEY WILL NO LONGER BE ALLOWING DECLAWING IN THEIR CAT FRIENDLY PRACTICES! https://catvets.com/claw-friendly-toolkit/
Please take 60 seconds and sign our petition to AAFP. AAFP Petition
ICatCare says declawing is an act of mutilation and unethical and they don’t allow it in their CAT FRIENDLY CLINICS.
Please send a polite email to ICatCare and ask them why they license their Cat Friendly brand to AAFP when AAFP allows declawing in their CAT FRIENDLY Practices. [email protected] You can CC AAFP in the email – [email protected]
If you get a reply that’s different than what they sent us, please send it to [email protected]
The story and facts.
International Cat Care (ICatCare.org) and its veterinary division licenses their Cat Friendly Program to the American Association of Feline Practitioners. (AAFP)
AAFP allows declawing in their CAT FRIENDLY PRACTICES. Here’s our 2018 survey of 156 CAT FRIENDLY Practices. 85% of them declaw cats. Cat Friendly Practices and declawing
We wonder why ICatCare would license their Cat Friendly Program to an organization that allows this inhumane and mutilating amputation procedure in their CAT FRIENDLY Practices.
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We sent this note to ICatCare in Sept. 2019 to ask them this question.
“You have the power to require AAFP to stop declawing in their CAT FRIENDLY Practices. Please care about this. Hundreds of cats are having their toe bones and claws unnecessarily amputated in Cat Friendly Practices each year. Cat Friendly is your brand and term so please make a difference in the lives in cats in America. As you know, a practice can’t be “cat friendly” if it is doing this barbaric and inhumane amputation procedure to cats. This should concern you on how AAFP is keeping the truth about declawing from the public. https://citythekitty.org/
Here’s the response we received on Oct. 14, 2019
“Thank you for your messages, and many apologies for the delay in getting back to you about this. We wanted to take the time to involve all relevant parties in the discussions before we responded.
Declawing is a hugely contentious welfare issue and it is one which we also feel very strongly about. In 2017 we released our position statement calling for the declawing of cats to be banned and outlined that we consider ‘the declawing of cats for anything other than genuine therapeutic medical reasons to be an act of mutilation, and to be unethical’. We also do not allow declawing at our Cat Friendly Clinics which are worldwide except for in North and South America, where the programme is licensed by AAFP as the Cat Friendly Practice programme.
We recognise your concerns regarding some AAFP Cat Friendly Practices offering declawing as an elective procedure. It is a very different situation for us as declawing is already illegal in the UK and many other countries where we run our programme. AAFP are correct when they say that they do not have the legislative power to allow or disallow any procedure, but we all took great solace from New York becoming the first US state to ban cat declawing this year and we hope that it will encourage others to follow suit.
AAFP strongly opposes declawing as an elective procedure and is taking positive steps to educate both the veterinary community and cat owners and we fully support them with this. The Cat Friendly Practice programme brings a wide range of benefits to cats at each practice. We completely understand your desire to change things in the USA – we also understand AAFP’s wider approach to educate practices not to declaw against a legislative background which allows it while still providing huge benefits from the Cat Friendly Practice programme.
We have remained in discussion with AAFP regarding declawing.
Thank you again for your messages and for taking the time to engage with us about this.
Best wishes, the iCatCare and ISFM team”
Our reply to ICatCare.org
Thank you for your reply. Declawing is not a controversial or contentious welfare issue; it is just plain wrong.
I, too, was pleased to see change in the USA. As you know, the New York ban on declawing was accomplished only by the efforts of the Paw Project, a veterinarian-run nonprofit here in the USA. They are also behind every piece of legislation banning declawing in North America. AAFP has done nothing to help with this.
In fact, they have thwarted it. AAFP recently publicly humiliated the Paw Project to all of its members, exhibitors, and conference attendees by saying that the Paw Project is uninvited to the AAFP conference in San Francisco, citing concerns of harassment, threatening behavior, and other untrue statements. (Look at the AAFP email blast of September 23, 2019).
Perhaps you at ICatCare and ISFM should align yourselves with the Paw Project and not AAFP. The former does not allow declawing and the latter does.
I truly believe that AAFP allows its Cat Friendly Practices to declaw for financial reasons, so by association, you are allowing that, too.
To say that AAFP has to work with practices that declaw because legislation doesn’t prohibit it is weak. Legislation doesn’t prohibit many of the things that are required for cat friendly certification and yet you require those things in order for those practices to be certified.
Certainly there is no legislation requiring hospitals to have cat waiting rooms, etc. It is obvious that a cat would rather be in a hospital that won’t mutilate it more than one that will mutilate it, but has a cat-only waiting room.
Why don’t you revoke AAFP’s certification and issue certification from ISFM that is truly cat friendly in the Americas? AAFP is betraying your ideals and giving you excuses that aren’t real and aren’t good for cats.
Think about it. As their big sister organization, you are allowing AAFP to assign Cat Friendly, your brand, to hospitals that mutilate cats and harm their long term health and well-being.
That can’t be right. Step up. They’ll listen to you. And if they don’t, what do you have to lose?
Thank you again.
Lori Shepler
We also sent them this email after we heard about this new study that shows declawed cats suffer from chronic stress.
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