California has joined a small but growing list of US states that no longer permit the routine mutilation of cats through declawing. Unless a vet deems it medically unavoidable, the practice is now banned.
It isn’t a manicure. It isn’t clipping nails. It is the amputation of the first knuckle of every toe. Bones are cut away, tendons severed. The result is a cat left permanently disfigured, living with pain that lasts long after the anaesthetic has worn off. This has never been “minor surgery.” It has always been violence sanitised by language.
For decades, the excuse was furniture. Sofas and carpets valued above a living being’s body. Some households also claimed it made cats safer around people. But scratching is not a defect, it is part of who cats are. They claw to stretch, to exercise, to communicate, to care for their own nails. To take that away is to deny them their nature.
The fact that up to a quarter of cats in North America and Canada are declawed shows how easily supremacy takes hold when convenience trumps respect. And it isn’t just declawing, it’s one example in a long list of ways humans treat other animals as property to be modified or broken to fit our preferences.
Assemblymember Alex Lee, who pushed the bill forward, called declawing “outdated, cruel, and unethical.” He’s right, though it has always been those things. The only thing that’s changed is public awareness catching up with what advocates have been saying for years.
California’s move sits alongside other recent measures targeting the so-called “pet trade.” Puppy mills pumping out dogs as commodities. Resellers disguising origins, shredding paperwork, reducing someone to a barcode. Even when states pass bans, the industry wriggles underground. Because as long as animals are treated as products, there will always be someone looking to cash in.
These bans matter. They save lives and set precedents. But the real issue goes deeper. As long as animals are still regarded as things to be owned, shaped, and disposed of, exploitation will find a way.
Cats should never have had their toes cut off for furniture. Dogs should never have been bred in warehouses for profit. And no animal should ever be treated as a commodity in the first place.