The world's best-known veterinarian and author believes that declawing is barbaric

This is a short note but one that must be made. I would say that the world's best-known veterinarian/author on cat health, welfare, anatomy and anything else to do with domestic cats (and dogs and other animals), is Dr. Bruce Fogle MBE, DVM, MRCVS. Nobody comes close to him as a veterinarian/author. The only veterinarians/authors that come to mind are those that wrote Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook but they wrote one book and there are four of them. Fogle has written many books on cats and dogs and other topics.

Dr Bruce Fogle. Photo in public domain. Here he is photographed in his clinic in London.

In one of his recommended books, Complete Cat Care, he has a small section on declawing. Dr. Bruce Fogle lives and works in the UK to the best of my knowledge. He is British but born in Canada (dual passports I guess). He states that "declawing cats is a cultural issue". That is certainly correct because the operation is confined to a very small part of the world i.e. North America. And in North America it is more or less, nowadays, exclusively confined to America as Canada is doing away with this barbaric operation through a gradually extending ban across the provinces.

Dr. Fogle states that when he qualified as a veterinarian he declawed cats. I think I will quote verbatim:

"Personally, I performed this operation in the first years after I graduated, but I stopped once I thought about what I was doing. I haven't declawed a cat now for over 30 years. I think it's a barbaric procedure."

I think he is being very honest when he says that. He was trained in Canada, a declawing nation. He came to Britain in 1970 to work at Regent's Park Zoo.

I remember asking my veterinarian about 15 years ago in London what he thought about American veterinarians declawing cats and he wouldn't answer the question. He knew that I had a website and he simply wanted to keep out of trouble. He kept quiet. I wanted him to speak up like Dr. Bruce Fogle to help put some pressure on American veterinarians to stop the procedure but he failed me. He was a huge disappointment to me.

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Dr. Fogle statement is interesting because he changed his mind after performing the operation for a while. He had been presumably indoctrinated to a certain extent by his training to believe it was all right but after he had carried out the procedure a number of times he saw how barbaric it was. He is speaking on the back of first-hand experience of what domestic cats go through when they've been declawed.

Vet techs have come forward with the same thoughts: barbaric.

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I hope people take note of that. One last point: he also states that:

"In other countries this type of surgery is considered a mutilation, and performing it is enough to have a vet's licence to practice revoked."

Yes, if a veterinarian performed the operation in the UK, I would argue that they would lose their licence to practice veterinary medicine and they would expose themselves to being charged, tried and convicted of animal cruelty and abuse under the relevant criminal animal abuse laws of the UK.