A cat owner was arrested in La Guardia (Jaen) after allegedly carrying out home surgery on her cats – she has been charged with Animal Cruelty.

Seprona had been tipped off by neighbours that a woman had reportedly chopped off the last phalanx of the animals’ paws so that they wouldn’t scratch the furniture.

The medical term for this type of surgery (which is prohibited in most countries) is onychectomy or simply, declawing.

Seprona police officers accompanied by a veterinary surgeon from the Ilustre Colegio Oficial de Veterinarios de Jaén called at her house. They found two of her three cats, identifying them with a chip reader and confirmed that the woman had amputated their distal phalanges to remove their claws on all four paws.

The third cat, which was also located and found to have undergone the same mutilation, had been registered as ‘missing.’

(News: La Guardia, Jaen, Andalucia)