Please help us ban declawing

[weluvcats]

But back to declawing cats, could anyone please tell me any true stories of how cats have been affected by declawing ? I'm making a collection and would like to include them, just with your user name or even an initial.Today I've heard of a cat bleeding to death after declawing,another who lost both her back feet after the op went horribly wrong,another fully declawed abandoned by a roadside ..apparently still didn't suit his owner, cats with biting problems, litter tray problems, and back problems.
Why on earth would any true cat lover take the risk of any of these happening to their cat ?

I can tell you about my experiences with declawed cats...Over the 25 years that I've been married, we have taken in 10 stray cats. We kept all but 3, who we found homes for. Two of the cats that we kept had been declawed...One a female (Baby) just a year and a half ago, and the other a male (Jellybean), about 23 years ago. Both of these animals had apparently been dumped or abandoned in some way...Why, I'll never know because they both are (and were) two of the sweetest cats I have ever known in my life. Baby had been hanging around our neighborhood for a couple of months on and off. She was spayed in addition to being declawed and was so sweet, we thought maybe she had wandered away from home, so we tried to find who she might belong to. We called the police, the animal shelter, all the vets in town, and ran 3 different ads in the paper with no luck. It seemed no one was looking for this wonderful cat. Right when we had decided to keep her, she showed up one afternoon limping. As it turned out, she had two bite wounds on her left hind leg, one of which was badly infected. Long story short, we took her to our vet, treated her wounds and updated her shots, etc. She became ours that day. The vet said that her bite wounds were undoubtedly from another cat...She had been in an altercation of some kind, and without front claws was clearly at a disadvantage in defending herself. I'll never understand why anyone would abandon any animal, but to abandon an animal that cannot effectively defend itself is just beyond me. I'm sorry about the circumstances that brought Baby to us, but I am so very thankful that we have her.

Judy