February 2023 Update. Dr Michael Yurkus, 2017-18 President of the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association, is still declawing cats according to an employee at his
Of the 97 vets who perform declaws in this study, 72% said they do them frequently, commonly, often, routinely, or on a regular basis and more than one a month.
21% said they just do around one a month, very few or not often.
7% wouldn’t say how many they do.
Only 12% offered or suggested alternatives or asked why the cat owner wanted to declaw his or her cat.
Let’s thank the NYSVMS for reminding us that we must use our VOICES and EDUCATE the public and CAT OWNERS that DECLAWING is ANIMAL AB– USE and that we must protect all cats from LICENSED VETs who are doing this mutilating and inhumane procedure!
The practice where the President of the Long Island Veterinary Medical Association works charges $1.50 per toe to apply Soft Paws to your cat’s nails and this President charges $38 per toe for her to amputate your cat’s toes. The practice that the President of the New York State Veterinary Medical Society owns, charges $4 per toe to apply Soft Paws to your cat’s nails and this President charges $66 per toe for her to amputate your cat’s toes. Both practices require you to bring in your own Soft Paws for the application service.
A big study was quietly published in JAVMA in January 2016 and it involves declawing, debarking, and ear cropping. You have to be a member to read it, so most of the general public never saw this.
Most vets find ear cropping and debarking to be unethical and wrong. Yet many of these same vets are declawing cats.
Don’t you think it’s time for a wake up call for these vets to start putting the welfare of cats on the same level as dogs?
The NYSVMS sent this smug email (below) to their 5000 veterinary members yesterday about their victory. They are so proud of this accomplishment of stopping our important declawing bill AND the bill that would have banned the cruel and inhumane mutilating procedure that silences a dog’s voice. As with declawing, this procedure provides no medical benefit to dogs and are done solely for the convenience of the owners.
There are always safe, commonsense, and humane alternatives for the natural scratching behavior in cats and the barking in dogs.
The NYSVMS and other veterinary associations take this route that they don’t want anyone to take away their “medical procedures” because they are “licensed professional veterinarians” and they know the best “medical treatment decisions that are in the best interests of their patients.”
Mishka was 2 yrs old, his owner had him , “declawed on all four paws and had all of Mishka’s teeth were removed because he was chewing on baseboards and things.”
Yep, a trained, licensed veterinarian, who had years of education in the veterinary medical field, made the decision to perform these “medical procedures” on this poor kitty.
Yesterday, the NYSVMS stopped our cat protection bill in NY, that would have ended the elective, non-therapeutic mutilating procedure that these unethical veterinary professionals like to call a “medical procedure.” It’s NOT a medical procedure but they convinced enough NY Senators that pro-declaw vets should be able to keep amputating kitties toe bones and claws and stopped the NY Cat Protection bill.
These “leaders” who run these powerful and rich veterinary associations, pretend like they really really care about cats and say if declawing was banned then many cats would be thrown away to shelters and euthanized.
The NYSVMS, Long Island Veterinary Medical Association, and other NY veterinary associations successfully stopped our bill. Some of the Senators had some “concerns” about our cat protection bill and obviously believed the NYSVMS’s disgusting propaganda about declawing.
They are telling the NY legislators that they really, really care about cats and don’t want them to end up in shelters.
I thought the only way to really verify that they truly care about cats staying out of shelters is to see if they would personally help when you say that you are going to take your cat to a shelter for another behavioral issue that doesn’t involve declawing or making good money on toe amputations