One day, I picked up a phone call and was surprised that it was our vet trying to schedule him for a declawing. I told her that she was mistaken - our cat was a full grown adult that had lived in the wild for a bit before we rescued him and he would not need that service. She explained that my wife was worried about the leather furniture so i told her (and my wife when she came home) that the cat could have the furniture for as long as it took to get it out of his system - if he ruined it, we could get it recovered once he was gone.
He was the best cat ever and suddenly stopped exercising his claws on the furniture. We both miss him and would never have a cat declawed.
God bless you sir, We had a cat that was wild before we had rescued him he passed recently best and sweetest cat we had ever seen in our life. So good he would let the groomer groom him let us give him a bath (just whined a little but was cooperative) He started scratching furniture) we just gave him a old chair sprayed with catnip and sprayed the rest with some anti cat claw spray and trained him and worked great he eventually got use to the cat scratching toys my mom made him a homemade scratch post too that was more natural. The cat even warned us when their was a tornado siren going off at night actually before then went under the table.
You did a good thing for your beloved cat. We have leather couches, and unfortunately, the kitties scratched them up a bit when we first got the set. There are plenty of posts for them to scratch and they've long stopped scratching the couches, but the marks remain. I shrug it off. The couches are still comfortable and the cats are happy and affectionate. I would never remove my cats's distal phalanxes (that's what declawing is) just for the furniture's sake.