I would NEVER declaw my cat. Many vets won't do it anymore and the only ones that do IMO are just money hungry. You never know how much pain these animals are in and I heard that they always will be in pain. Delawing is also a MAJOR reason why many people end up dumping their cats in shelters. The cat ends up in so much pain from digging in a catbox that it stops using the litterbox. The US is one of the only countries who still hasn't outlawed declawing.
I had a friend who adopted a cat from a shelter. She took it to be declawed and since he had bandages she put him in the bathroom away from the other pets. When she went back to the bathroom he had shook the bandages off and the bathroom was covered in blood. She couldn't believe how much he was bleeding, it was really terrible.
You can always clip a cat's nails or put softpaws on their claws. They work better if someone experienced puts them on the cat like a groomer.
Here's some sites about declawing:
http://amby.com/cat_site/declaw.html http://cats.about.com/cs/declawing/a/declawing.htm