Cat declawing is a 'gruesome' practice. There's a bill in the RI legislature to ban it.

Twenty years later, Sen. Melissa Murray still remembers the sound of the cat’s bones clinking against the metal bowl. One after the other, after the other.

“It would be the equivalent of removing your fingertips up to the first knuckle,” she said. “I assisted with one declawing (when I was a veterinarian technician). It was my first and last. It was quite gruesome.”

Bills in the legislature this session aim to make Rhode Island the third state to ban the declawing of cats, also known as onychectomy. The practice amputates the last bone on a cat’s paw, which includes the nail, so the nail can’t regrow.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Murray, passed on Thursday night. The House bill has been introduced and referred to the House Health & Human Services Committee.

How common is cat declawing in Rhode Island?

In the early 2000s, research suggested that about 20% of cats were declawed in America to prevent them from scratching furniture or their owners.

But as cat owners and veterinarians have become more aware of the risks, including chronic pain, nerve damage, excessive bleeding and infection, and as more research has come out showing that declawing doesn’t help with behavioral issues, the practice has waned, according to Shelly Pancoast, a veterinarian and president of the Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association.

“This procedure is extremely rare in Rhode Island,” Pancoast wrote in an email. “Most veterinarians do not perform the procedure at all, and some of the larger practices in RI that do perform the procedure do less than one a year, and only after counseling owners at length about other options.”

Pancoast added that as an ER vet, she can’t remember the last time she saw a declawed cat.

What would the bill do?

The bill bans declawing unless it’s for therapeutic use, which includes circumstances such as recurring infections or an abnormal condition in the claw, such as cancer, that needs to be removed. It states specifically that therapeutic purposes do not include making the cat easier to handle.

People who violate the ban could be fined up to $1,000.

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This is the second year Murray has sponsored this bill and the latest of many attempts for Rep. William O’Brien, who sponsored the bill in the House. The bills, Murray said, didn’t get much traction last time, which she attributed partially to the language being “more punitive.”

This year, she worked with The Paw Project, a nonprofit that advocates the end of declawing.

What has the reaction to the bill been?

A Change.Org petition that has been active since 2018 has more than 9,000 signatures asking the legislature to take this step. Murray, who has put in 25 other bills this session, said she’s seen broad support for this one.

However, the veterinary medical association does not support the bill. Pancoast said it’s unnecessary, considering how rare the procedure has become, and she pointed to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' stance that well-intentioned legislation can be problematic; some cat owners might choose euthanasia if denied the option to declaw.

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“Most veterinarians in Rhode Island do not perform the procedure, and those that do will only do so after exhausting all other options with an owner, to keep a cat out of a shelter or from being euthanized,” Pancoast wrote. “As veterinarians, we take an oath, 'above all do no harm,' and every veterinarian I know takes this very seriously. We do not want to set a precedent of the legislature having control over our medical decisions; we should be trusted to know what is best for our patients.”

Murray says in the places where declawing laws have passed, the number of cats being surrendered has decreased.

The British Columbia SPCA did a study looking at six years of data and records of nearly 75,000 cats before and after the ban and found no significant difference in surrenders due to scratching and a decrease in euthanasia.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Cat declawing ban bill passes RI Senate, heads to House