The Declawing Conspiracy

I’ve just watched a particularly nasty piece of propaganda on YouTube, by Dr Glenn Mayer DVM he is currently co-chair of the Public Education Committee and he is the owner of the Abell Animal Hospital in Chicago - which advertises itself on it’s website as your pet’s second best friend! It also advertises on several online veterinary directories, and amongst the services it offers is declawing. In the video this stiff-necked man, in whose hands rests the lives and well-being of cats in Park Ridge, Norridge, Harwood Heights, Niles, Rosemont and Des Plaines Communities of Chicago talks to us, haltingly, about the “complete packages” the clinic offers, pointing out various pieces of equipment in the operating theatre and boasts of the pre-op checks and the constant monitoring of the animals during surgery. He stresses that the clinic does “place a real premium on safety and monitoring” because they realise that “these are your pets and you do care very much about them”. Then Dr Mayer talks us through the merits of his clinic’s laser equipment, donning his safety glasses to demonstrate it’s vaporising capabilities on a wooden tongue-depressor, allowing us to see smoke rising from the cut he makes in the wood and describing it’s uses and flexibility for various surgeries, and telling us that with the laser there is “much less bleeding, and much less pain” in fact he would have us believe that the laser is the best thing since sliced bread! Hmmm…..maybe.

But I think not!

Because after a couple of minutes, and another reminder that with laser surgery there is less bleeding and less pain he brings the subject round to declawing, saying the clinic always uses laser for declawing. He says his feelings on declawing are that it is an individual decision. He says he can’t tell you if every pet needs (NEEDS!) to be declawed and he can’t tell you that every cat doesn’t need to be declawed (his words…pet first and then cat) but the thing is “if the cat is destroying the house” (DESTROYING THE HOUSE??? Oh come on…how big is a cat? Even the biggest cat can’t be more than about 20lbs…how can an animal that size DESTROY a house?) Or “if the cat is hurting people” those are good reasons to get it declawed (IT) because they want the cat to stay in the home and they want the cat to have a happy household. So he goes on to say that when they use a laser to declaw it is “better for them” (the cats) because they don’t have to use a tourniquet and they don’t have to use a scalpel. Yeah but then he had to add that they DO have to clean out “what’s called the char…erm..the burn area” and they do have to put a bandage on to “help with any bleeding that occurs…erm that might occur” and then he tells us the “pets “ have to stay overnight, he can’t even bring himself to mention cats by name! And again he tells us there is LESS bleeding and LESS pain. In the light of evidence we have recently seen of a declawed cat the morning after the operation I’m not surprised the pets have to stay overnight and can only imagine with pity the sort of night that the cats endure!

But wait till you hear what comes next!!! He says, with a smile and a proud gleam in his eye that when they do procedures these days they “GENERALLY use pain medication, which is not something that has always happened during his 33 years of being a veterinarian” but they now realise pets DO HAVE PAIN. Now apart from the thought of the suffering of all those cats over all those years who he has operated on and then in his ignorance given no post op pain relief, what’s this about “generally” using pain medication these days? Does that mean sometimes they do NOT, because according to my PC’s list of synonyms “generally” means usually, normally, in general, in the main, by and large and commonly. This ties in of course with what we already know, some veterinarians charge EXTRA for pain relief! Some veterinarians advise AGAINST any pain relief because if the edge is taken off the cat’s pain then he or she might attempt to move around normally and use the paws in the way they are meant to be used thus causing the wounds to reopen, (oh what a nuisance if those wounds re-open and have to be re-glued, keep those bad cats in pain so they don’t cause extra work!)
On the clinic’s website there is a library of medical information and advice, some of it covers feline behaviour, and give them their due, they make a point of saying that punishing cats is counter-productive, so WHY when they have the perfect opportunity to educate the public about what declawing REALLY is (charring and burning the cat’s toes off!) and not forgetting that on his website it states that this man is currently co-chair of the Public Education Committee is there no mention of how to train cats to use scratching equipment and no discussion about the alternatives to de-knuckling cats! Why is he prepared to stand there listing the merits of laser surgery and in particular laser declaw surgery without including a few sentences describing what declawing is? Why does he gloss over it, saying laser is “better for them” and not all cats NEED declawing? Why, if he really IS your cat’s second best friend, doesn’t he tell your cat’s first best friend, YOU, to sod off because he is not going to declaw your cat? What is the matter with these people, WHY can’t they see what they are doing? Or can they see….but is it that they are blinded by the mighty dollar?

And finally, why has he disabled the comments facility on YouTube if he is so certain he’s doing such a good job? I know for fact that the comment facility was not disabled until one of our troops questioned him on declawing, her comment was never acknowledged and the comment facility was blocked. Now is that what you would expect from a veterinarian from a reputable clinic? Or is it what you would expect from a declawing pimp who wants to cover up what he and his colleagues do to cats for money? Hmmmm?????

Here is the video and HERE is the petition to the AVMA calling for a ban on declawing