This is 2 1/2 month old Ollie with amazing claws.
Sept. 9, 2016
I received this note from a student from Northwest Missouri State University yesterday.
City, I need help urgently. I am a seventeen year old college student at Northwest Missouri State University. I recently qualified for an emotional support animal for my various mental health problems. Over the weekend, I got a kitten, named Ollie, to come live with me after the processing is finished. However, today I learned that they are requiring me to front declaw him before he moves in. Obviously, this is not going to happen, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to have to drop out/transfer schools, but I will not mentally make it through the semester without him, and there is no way I am going to mutilate my baby just so he can live here.
Another girl going through this same problem is supposed to move her cat (Peanut) in on the 16th, and her cat will be declawed on Tuesday unless something changes. She is working with me to try to get this issue resolved, but we are not getting much help from the university on how to get around this policy.
I talked to the person who deals with student issues and complaints, who usually handles problems like this, but he said it was unfightable.
This is 7 yr old Peanut.
Please help me fight this.
Allison
I’m happy to bring you good news. I sent a letter last night to one of the people in charge of Student Affairs at Northwest Missouri State University and tried to educate him and his University about declawing and how it is very inhumane and unnecessary.
I just got a note from Allison saying that she got an email saying that the declawing requirement had been lifted and she doesn’t have to declaw her cat.
I called the school to verify and they said they reviewed the policy and updated it and took the declawing requirement out.
Allison is a hero for not giving up and for fighting for the rights of cats to be healthy and not have to go through such a mutilating and inhumane procedure!
So please, remember that you should NEVER give up and always fight for what is right. Kitties in the world must be safe from this inhumane and horrific procedure.
Here is the note I sent to the University last night.
Hi _ _ _ _,
I’m the mom of City the Kitty, one of the famous internet cats, and I received word that you have a requirement at your University housing to have cats declawed.
City’s number one cause is to end declawing in North America and educate people as to how cruel, horrific, and inhumane it is. He has thousands of followers throughout the world who are helping with this important cause.
I am not sure if you are aware that declawing, which is amputating the first toe bone along with the claw in a cat’s paw, causes a lifetime of some sort of pain and suffering and takes away parts of their body that are so important to their health and well being.
Declawing is banned in over 28 countries and considered unethical and not performed in most of the rest of the world because it is so barbaric and cruel. Veterinarians all over the world look at vets here in America, in shame because they are violating their oath they took to help protect and heal animals. Declawing is the most painful and barbaric surgery in veterinary medicine.
Declawing was started in the 50’s by a very unethical vet and it caught on, but mostly only in America (Canada also but not as much) Veterinarians make great money doing this inhumane thing to cats and that’s why it is so hard for us to end it in N. America.
Many cat owners believe their unethical pro-declaw vets who make them feel that declawing is ok for their cats. Now that we have the internet and people are educating themselves on the facts about declawing, thankfully more and more people are doing the right thing and not amputating their kitties’ toe bones and claws.
Many vets are also not declawing cats anymore and we have lists of them on citythekitty.com, declaw.com, and pawproject.org
The American Veterinary Medicine Association condemned declawing in exotic cats in 2013 because of what they say is the pain and suffering factor. They haven’t done the same for domestic cats because of the revenue that declawing generates for their veterinarians but the pain and suffering from declawing is the same for all cats, domestic or exotic. (some exotic cats are as small as 6 lbs by the way)
Most cats already know how to use scratchers and have their nails trimmed so it is just very unnecessary and quite inhumane to require it in the first place.
It is actually illegal in California and Rhode Island for property management companies and landlords to require declawing in cats for renters. Soon more states will join in.
Also, I’m not sure if you are aware but cats that are declawed often stop using their litter boxes and urinate on carpets because it is too painful on their paws to use it. That terrible smell is harder to get out of an apartment than replacing a rug. Many also develop aggressive behavior and biting problems because they have lost their first line of defense. A cat bite is 100 times more dangerous than a scratch. Also the cats usually have bone fragments left in their toe bones from the declaw which causes a lot of pain and suffering too.
In the last year I reached out to other big property management companies like Flaherty and Collins with over 20,000 rental units and Steadfast Management Company with over 26,000 units, and IRET with thousands of apartments, and they announced that they are becoming truly pet friendly rental property companies and are taking the declaw requirement out of their pet policies.
Just last week I reached out to Samaritan Companies and after I educated them on the facts about declawing, and they also took the declaw requirement out of their pet policy.
Will you please join them and do the same?
I’m hoping that you guys realize how your pet policy is asking for a lot of painful and unnecessary cruelty to be done to cats and you all are perpetuating this very false idea that declawing is ok for a cat.
Thanks _ _ _ _ for your time. If you aren’t the person I need to talk to, can you put me in touch with the person asap.
You can go to Citythekitty.com and read the stories I’ve done about declawing.
Also the PawProject.org has all the facts you need. Here is a 55 min documentary that will help you with the facts about this very inhumane procedure.
https://www.kcet.org/shows/link-voices/episodes/paw-project
Thank you,
Lori and City the Kitty
http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/cats/tips/declawing.html
http://www.littlebigcat.com/declawing/declawing-cats-required-to-rent/