In , "bewtifulfreak"
wrote:
| "Arjun Ray" wrote in message
|

| Thus, declawing requires amputation of the distal phalanx. The
| problem with partial amputation (yes, sawing through rather than
| disjointing) is that claw regrowth can happen - almost always in
| misshapen form.
|
| You mean with the laser declawing?

It's my understanding that the laser is only doing what used to be done
with guillotine-like scissors (i.e. cut through the tendons, cartilage,
etc, connecting the distal phalanx to the rest of the finger/toe, to
disjoint it). I suppose it's more "surgical" in that sense.

Declawing has had evolution in its procedures: things like "scraping out
the claw root" and "sawing off enough of the bone" are older approaches
which have failed - due to unacceptable incidence of claw regrowth - and
have been abandoned in favor of complete disjointing, which is actually
a "simpler" procedure overall. Whether it's done with a knife-edge or a
light beam is a quiddity.

| This sounds at *least* as bad as having the toe taken completely off!

Well, for a cat, that's basically what it is. We walk on our feet,
distributing the load from toes to heel. A cat walks on its distal
phalanges. The bone is at an angle to the second phalanx, not end on as
in our fingers or toes, sort of like a shoe, and lies flat along its
length when the cat walks, with the other bones arranged upward in an
arc.

Removing that bone transfers the entire pressure onto the point of the
now exposed second phalanx. The adaptation is to the increase the arc
from the wrist downward to make as much of the second (and even the
third) phalanx lie flat along the ground. In heavier cats (such as the
big cats) this can lead to collapse all the way up to the wrist. See
this before-after video of a lion whose suffering was alleviated by
reconstructive surgery:

http://www.gt.net/~pproject/naala/kona.mov

(It's referenced from http://www.pawproject.com/html/default.asp )