My vet does it. He does not recommend it. He and I had a long talk about it a while back. He says he does every bit of education possible with people before doing it, but he knows what the alternative is and that is that either the cat is forced to live outdoors for the rest of it's life or it is turned into the animal shelter, where there is little or no chance of it surviving. After having that talk with him, I understood why he will perform the surgery and I appreciated the fact that he opposes it very much. He does insist on keeping them in his office for a longer than normal period of time because he wants to make sure that they do not experience pain and he can keep them sedated and administer pain meds and also keep them in a sterile environment while the healing takes place.

It is still very sad that people will do this, though. I admire the European countries and the counties in CA that have outlawed this practice. Even my own sister has had all of her cats declawed.