My boyfriend took 3 cats to the vet for me a couple weeks ago...he took my mom's female torti calico cat to be declawed, my big orange and white male cat to be checked - he had diarrhea, and a young orange and white male cat to be neutered. When the receptionist checks pets in, she puts a piece of tape on the pet carrier you bring them in with their name on it....then the pet gets moved to a kennel in the back and again, a piece of tape on the kennel with their name and procedure on it. She mixed up the names on the pet carriers for my big orange/white cat and the female torti. She even wrote the physical description down for the torti calico cat because my boyfriend didn't know what to call it. So they end up putting the wrong names on the kennels, and oops, they declawed my big orange/white cat and checked the torti for diarrhea.

No one ever looked at the physical description of the cats in the file...no telling how many people handled them that day - techs, 2 vets, the receptionist, and they all got it wrong. The first vet did the declawing in the morning, and I called after lunch to see if they had checked my orange cat for diarrhea and the second vet called me back and said she had examined the cat and didn't find any diarrhea. No kidding, it was the wrong cat.

When I went to pick up the neutered cat and my older cat, they brought out the torti and I was like "that's the wrong cat" they tried to argue with me and I told them...I've had my cat for 7 years and my mom's had this cat for 3 years..I know them apart and they don't even look alike. Plus one's male and one's female. I was very upset and they had the office manager call me..and instead of apologizing to me, she told me that it must have been my boyfriend's fault because she would never make a mistake like that..that when she makes a chart for an animal, that chart never leaves them...that she has been there 20 years...there must have been some kind of miscommunication and blah blah blah. NEVER apologized. I demanded copies of the charts and she herself had written the description of the female, so SHE mislabeled the pet carriers. Even if my boyfriend told her wrong, all she had to do was look inside the carrier to see it was the wrong cat.

They refunded all my money, including the charge for the neuter on the 3rd cat..they gave us all the medicine for free and when I went to pick up my accidentally-declawed cat the next day, they gave us a bunch of food and did his fecal exam.

Needless to say, I'm still furious about the whole thing so I made a complaint with the Veterinary Medical Board and they are reviewing it. I didn't want that cat declawed, it was unnecessary as he had never once scratched anything but a scratching post. The other cat was very destructive with her claws so it was either throw her outside or have her declawed.