Jan (Queenscoopalot) was called to a nursing home a couple of summers ago here. The nurses had been feeding a cat with a partial tail. After much searching, she finally managed to trap him (there was a heavily wooded area and then a very busy street below the hilled woods making it near impossible to know where he could be and no real feeding schedule- eye, eye,eye!!!!!) Anyway, turned out, this orangie long haired male was already neutered, had likely accidently gotten out of his home. Maybe he belonged to an elderly person or someone with lots of kids and hard to monitor the doors... Anyway, he is declawed in front but this clearly did him no good. The vet said some creature ripped off his tail. Fox, coyote, raccoon? He is lucky whatever it was didn't do more damage. He was a 6 month quarenteen and now in a good home. My point is, BACK CLAWS DO NOT DO MUCH GOOD TO HELP CATS TO DEFEND THEMSELVES!
Predators grab at the neck when they can, what good are back claws then? zero. If someone has a story where back claws were used by a cat to save it's life against a predator, I welcome it, it would give us all some peace of mind for those poor strays out there that are declawed!