Tag: kitten

Despite Founder’s Focus on Vet Team Mental Health, Associated Veterinary Partners Allows Declawing, a Practice Harmful to Both Cats and Vet Staff

If declawing is contributing to moral stress for even some veterinary team members within Associated Veterinary Partners, as City the Kitty’s survey could suggest, it represents a preventable source of ethical conflict that could be eliminated with a single company-wide policy.

For a leader who has urged the veterinary profession to confront the systemic causes of moral injury, the question remains unanswered: Why does Co-founder and COO, Dr Bill Wagner, of Associated Veterinary Partners continue to allow an inhumane amputation procedure that may be creating the very ethical conflict and harm to veterinary professionals that he has spent years warning about?

MVMA Used Misleading Testimony to Influence 7 GOP Legislators Who Stopped Minnesota’s Declawing Bill

7 GOP Legislators are Duped by MVMA.org’s Declawing Deception And Kill The MN Anti-Declaw Bill, Ensuring Many Innocent and Healthy Cats in Minnesota Will Be Barbarically Mutilated and Suffer for Life. In 2025, MVMA spokesman Dr Trevor Ames assured lawmakers that “very few veterinary practices offer elective declawing as a service currently.” In 2026, MVMA’s spokesman, Dr Rob Memmem, co-owner of Gehrman Animal Hospital, reinforced that narrative in a March 2026 hearing, telling legislators there had been “a huge increase in the number of our veterinarians no longer performing the procedure over the last 15 or so years,” that “currently about 30%” still offer declawing while “70% are not,” and that the profession had “appropriately regulated itself moving away from this procedure.” He further claimed “a decreasing number of veterinary clinics are offering to perform this procedure entirely.” Our survey found that 61% of vet clinics in MN are still performing declawing.

Unnecessary and Inhumane: Majority of Ohio Vet Clinics Still Perform Declawing Despite Clear Evidence of Harm

Ohio — A statewide investigative declawing survey of 100 randomly selected veterinary clinics reveals a deeply troubling picture of the welfare of cats in Ohio, where this inhumane, mutilating, and cruel amputation procedure remains routine in many communities.
Declawing is the amputation of the last bone of every cat’s toe and it has been condemned by leading veterinary organizations and animal welfare organizations and outlawed in six U.S. states, restricted in dozens of cities, banned in eight of nine Canadian provinces, and prohibited in more than 40 countries. Decades of studies link the procedure to lifelong chronic pain, arthritis, mobility issues, and behavioral problems that often lead to cats being surrendered to shelters or euthanized.
Yet in Ohio, the practice remains widespread.
This survey found that approximately 80% of these clinics still declaw cats, with some openly advertising the procedure online and other even performing four-paw declaws.

AVMA’s Credibility in Crisis: Leaders With Financial Ties to Declawing Shape Policy, Prompting Calls to Rename It the “American Veterinary Money Association”

Story published on October 21, 2025.  (Petition to the AVMA. AVMA Petition Update January 2026.   In a sharp January 2026 Letter to the Editor in the Journal of Small Animal Practice, experts from the World Small Animal Veterinary Association Pain Committee condemn the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) House of Delegates for refusing to […]

The ASPCA’s Antiquated Declawing Position Is a Gift to Veterinarians Who Profit From This Barbaric Cruelty

The ASPCA claims to be the nation’s voice to prevent animal cruelty — yet when it comes to declawing, it sides with veterinarians who profit from this act of mutilation, not with cats.

The ASPCA’s declawing position shamefully condones cat declawing — a cruel and inhumane amputation procedure — hiding behind the flimsy excuse that in rare cases it might prevent euthanasia.

If the ASPCA truly cared about saving cats from being euthanized, they’d just support the humane alternatives to declawing or re-homing, not this barbaric and inhumane mutilation. They would also support laws to ban declawing.
The ASPCA’s declawing position has been used by veterinary medical associations and pro-declaw vets to block anti-declawing laws in Wyoming (2021), Arizona (2022), and Illinois (2023), helping protect profits rather than cats.