Is my cat suffering paw pain from a declaw she endured as a young kitty?

Is my cat suffering paw pain from a declaw she endured as a young kitty?

This is possibly a fairly classic case of botched domestic cat declaw surgery on a kitten which is causing continuing pain and discomfort which in turn has led to inappropriate elimination because walking on cat litter is painful.

The only way to find out whether the declaw surgery has been botched and if there are fragments of bone in the cat's paw or there is re-growth of the claw is by x-ray and that costs money and so, of course, will the follow-up surgery if there is something wrong.

When you consider that a veterinarian performs declaw surgery on all 10 toes on the fore-paws of a cat in about 15 mins you can see the potential for getting it, wrong can't you?  Most often veterinarians use a simple guillotine device a bit like garden secateurs.  It's quite horrendous really when you think about it.

The vet, of course, presumes that the excruciating pain suffered by the cat after the operation will subside over the forthcoming week.  But does it?  The veterinarian won't know and it is quite possible that neither will the cat's owner because cats are very good at hiding pain but sometimes a change in behaviour indicates something is amiss.

This is such a case.  Tina wants to have her cat's toes x-rayed by a competent veterinarian to see whether there is something wrong with them due to the declaw surgery which occurred many years before.

Tina has come to this conclusion because her cat demonstrates inappropriate elimination and continuing problems in that regard.  Her cat's name is Mollie.

My website provides charitable donations once a month based on the number of comments acquired during that month (at $.05 a comment).  The usual amount is about $80-$100 per month.  I'm happy to help and what we could do is put together two month's worth of donations to see whether that will cover the cost of x-rays.

Once the x-rays are carried out then, if there is a problem, there are veterinary surgeons who can repair the damage.  Some veterinarians are very skilled at this and know all about these sorts of problems.

What's the moral to this tale?  Well it is this: declaw surgery happens a lot and and no one knows whether the operation has left behind a lasting problem with pain and behaviour so beware and be aware of this potential problem.

Note: this is a duplicate post on the same subject but written entirely afresh with different words and therefore it is an entirely new post.  The reason why I posted it here is because this website can sometimes be found better by Google in searches than the main website. And I want to spread the word to help this cat.