42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I called up furtively, ashamed of myself.
I felt like explaining. I’m really not a bad person. I just can’t take it any more. I don’t feel good about myself. I don’t want to tell some of my friends, for fear of what they will think of me. There are alternatives to this final step. Have you tried them? Is there something wrong with me?

“I understand,” the person on the other end of the line says. She’s heard it before. Besides, money is money, no matter who gets bloody.

I am getting my kitten, Data, declawed.

The more I read about declawing, the more horrible it sounds. And declawing gets some bad PR. It’s like cutting off your fingers from the first knuckle. Some will claim it changes the cat’s personality. Some will say that it has a chance of crippling them.

There’s no question declawing is not a nice thing to do to your animal. It is amputation. It will hurt.

One city in California actually banned declawing, and the state supreme court recently upheld a municipality’s right to ban the surgery. A coworker erroneously said, isn’t that illegal now?

It’s not illegal, but all the same, I felt guilty when I called a nearby vet (not the same horrible vet who took care of Stinky) and asked if they declawed cats. I feared that because it is so out of favor, that it would be hard to get help. I imagined myself sneaking my cat across the state line where I thought they must not care what you do to your cat.
As it turns out, they do laser surgery, which is actually less painful and causes less bleeding. I thought that would make my guilty self feel a little better.

I set up an appointment and was just about to hang up when I remembered to ask how much it was. $304.

Whoa. That’s nothing like Michigan prices. I’ve just paid off my car, so I have a little extra money, but this would’ve essentially wiped out the car payment.

I hemmed and hawed a bit and said I didn’t think I could afford it. But she wasn’t done. For another $150, I could get extra pain medication, monitoring of vital signs, a blood panel and various other things I didn’t register because of extreme price shock.

“You will give him pain medication regardless, right?” I had a flashback to stories I’ve read about unlicensed people doing operations on animals without anesthetics. I’d happily do surgery on those people the same way if I ever caught them.

“Oh, yes, of course. But this will give him extra comfort, after the surgery. You want him to be comfortable, right?”

Now she was implying that I would be a bad cat mother if I didn’t want the extra medication and bells and whistles. I could swear they were charging for reading his horoscope and giving him a hot stone massage before surgery to relieve stress.

“I want him to be comfortable, but there’s no way I can afford that. I just spent $1,000 earlier this year trying to keep an elderly cat alive. All the money I had is gone.”

And this is an elective procedure.

“I understand. But you don’t have to choose now. You can talk with the vet tech when you come in.”

She was relying on the hard sell of my anxious cat, meowing in a carrier, as they undoubtedly would tell me the possible risks of heart failure or abnormal blood or urine. And I would probably respond in the way they would like. I don’t like suffering. I don’t even like the thought of declawing my cat. But he’s six months old, and the chances of him dying on the operating table because of some blood imbalance are pretty small.

“This is a really great package,” she continues. “It has a value of $250, but you’ll be getting it for $150.”

“Umm…” I’m a sucker for value, but this sounds more like suckering a sucker. It cost about $70 to declaw and neuter Merlin five years ago in Michigan. Of course, the vet was older than dirt and I had a discount for neutering because he was a shelter cat. But full price would’ve been $70.

I leave it at I’ll decide later and hang up.

And then I think, I don’t have to take this. I’m going to price another vet. I call the SPCA animal hospital. The vet there had been very nice when I took Data in to be treated for an upper respiratory infection right after I adopted him.

Again, with some trepidation, “Do you declaw cats?”

“Yes.”

No judgment in her voice. I must’ve truly been paranoid. When I made the first phone call, I expected to get the bait and switch of the fake abortion doctor. Give me pamphlets. Pray with me. Anything to keep me from declawing a poor, defenseless cat.

The second call was more straight-forward. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t say how I was at my wits end and that I had no other choice, as I had blabbered on with the first office.
The bottom line: $120. Still a stiff price compared to Midwestern prices, but now it seemed like a bargain. She didn’t try to upsell me. She didn’t try to talk me out of it. Simple, direct, and even two days sooner than the other appointment. And they’ll only keep him overnight for one day instead of two. I’m going to worry about my cat, and I’d like to have him back with me. Of course, at the first vet, they probably would’ve given the full spa treatment with hot towels and cucumbers over the eyes.

Cats can be expensive. You do it for love. I can’t live without my cats, and I do whatever I can afford for them. But I also have a limit of practicality. And unlike neutering, declawing is an elective procedure. Cats allegedly can be trained to not claw valuable furniture or carpet. You can provide them with scratching posts. You can deter scratching behavior through the use of special sticky products or even something like tape. You can spray stuff to keep them off the furniture, though my cats have always laughed at me. You can even use a product called Soft Paws, which are little plastic sheaths that are glued to their claws. Expensive because you keep having to replace them. Or just simply clip the cats claws regularly.

Data is not a cat who will submit to being held down for clipping. The squirt bottle has served as a deterrent as long as you’re in the room, but I have proof in the form of an overturned, dead, decapitated cactus that he really isn’t deterred from getting up on the counter.
He’s hyper and very rough with the other cats. And Ziggy and Merlin are both declawed. And he also likes to fight rough with humans, so that I’m covered in scratches. I don’t think he’s mean, much of the time. I just don’t think that he knows how to slow down. He doesn’t understand that he’s annoying the other cats, that they’re not kittens. And that I’m not a kitten.

I struggled with the declaw issue with both of the older boys, though not as much. I didn’t spend weeks trying to talk myself out of it. They were climbing curtains. They were beating on an elderly Stinky. There wasn’t much choice as I saw it. I also hadn’t read much about declawing then, either. It was also cheaper to declaw and neuter at the same time because they only had to go under anesthesia once. But Data was neutered by the shelter before I adopted him, so that argument doesn’t apply here.

Honestly, Data tries my patience. I feel bad for the other cats. He wakes me in the middle of the night as he wrestles with another cat. He purrs on me and then bites. He claws furniture, and not all of it belongs to me.

He licks everything. This is actually pretty cute. He holds Merlin down and washes him vigorously, but it then usually devolves into biting. I saw him lick a laundry basket, but he mostly likes to lick animate objects, like my eyelid. Ow, I said mildly. That hurts. Sandpaper on a very delicate part of skin is not pleasant, but for the most part, I don’t care if he licks me in passing on the face or hand. But everything smells like his smelly kitten food saliva because he’s either bitten or licked it.

I’m tired. I’m looking forward to have a day away from the obnoxious kitten. I still love him, of course. I was just thinking that he has some really lovely moments. When he comes and sits on my computer desk and purrs. Or when he’s resting, splayed all over the bed. He has the loudest purr. He’s affectionate, when he’s in the mood. He greets me at the door, along with Merlin.

I’m hoping that the declawing will serve to settle him a little bit. Some of that also will come with age. And putting him on even terms with the other cats could set him straight.

I’m still going to worry about him as I pack him off this morning to the vet. And part of me regrets that I can’t afford the spa treatment, as I’m fond of calling it. But part of me also knows that having a cat is a luxury. That some people can’t afford clothes, food or a roof over their head. I have to think of that, and the fact that I need the extra money I’m saving to pay for other obligations. I also am not going to funnel money to a vet to pay for their expensive laser surgery machine.

But I’m a better cat mother than some in that I’m keeping him, despite his faults. Even though he was already taken back once. Having a cat is a committment for the rest of its life. I’m in this for the long haul, and I’m just trying to make it a little easier on all of us.