Member-only story
Don’t Declaw your Cat!!!
Would you brutally mutilate a human friend? No? Then don’t do it to your furry friends!
We got Opal from a farm lady who rescues feral cats. She gets them spayed and turns them into barn cats. Most of the animals she saves seem content with this arrangement. Opal was not.
Opal is supremely affectionate. When friends visit, Opal does not hide. She’ll watch for a bit, then jump into their laps and insist on being petted, purring loudly the whole time. She loves people and likes having toys and a climbing tree and a soft bed.
She needed to be a house cat instead of a working cat. So the farm lady gave Opal to us.
We adore her, but we do have one complaint. Having been a wild cat, she never learned proper claw etiquette.
My prior cat, Snoopy, understood that only a trace of claw was appropriate when she kneaded us. She was very careful not to scratch us when we played together. On the rare occasion that she accidentally did, she’d run off in embarrassment.
Opal, on the other hand, scratches us all the time. She’s not doing it to be mean. She does it because she never learned as a kitten to sheath her claws around hairless human skin.
