How to Avoid the Risks Associated With Overgrown Cat Claws
Letting your cat’s nails grow unchecked can result in overgrown cat claws, which are uncomfortable and dangerous. Long cat nails can cause a range of problems from grooming troubles to serious infection and injury. Many owners assume cats take care of their claws all on their own. Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true, especially if your cat is older or overweight and, therefore, less active.
The good news: You can prevent all these health problems with simple, actionable steps! Here, we share practical tips and strategies to avoid the risks associated with overgrown cat claws. But, first, why is it so important to keep your cat’s nails from growing too long?
Overgrown Cat Claw Risks
The risks associated with letting your cat’s nails grow too long can be severe. Your cat’s nail health isn’t simply a matter of aesthetics. Instead, unkept, overgrown cat claws can create health concerns for your cat including:
Discomfort
Even slightly overgrown nails can cause your cat pain and discomfort. When your cat’s claws snag your clothing or the furniture, that’s a sign: Your cat’s nails are getting too long. Time for a trim!
Punctures
Once the nails grow past that snag point, they start to curl underneath your cat’s pads. The nails can puncture the pads of your cat’s paw causing your cat a lot of pain.
Infection
Anytime your cat sustains a puncture, the risk of infection skyrockets. If the nails puncture the bottom of your cat’s feet, your cat faces a possible infection. Sometimes, this infection even warrants antibiotics.
Mobility Issues
As your cat’s nails grow longer, they push against the ground as your cat walks. That pressure in your cat’s toes creates a painful walk for your pet. The longer the nails grow, as they start to curl under, your cat loses mobility–not just walking, but climbing and jumping, too.
Bottom line: Once your cat’s nails grow too long, his or her quality of life diminishes. Cats love to run, jump, climb, and play. Those activities provide your cat with healthy exercise and meet his or her needs. With overgrown claws, your cat experiences pain, no longer moves with ease and grace, and faces possible severe infection. You need to take care of those nails! Let’s talk about how.
Care for Long Cat Nails
The key to caring for long cat nails is preventing them in the first place. Ultimately, the goal is to get your cat’s nails to a healthy, comfortable length, then implement healthy habits to help your cat keep the nails trimmed.
However, if your cat’s nails are already too long or overgrown, it’s time to take action.
Talk to Your Vet
In severe cases, veterinary intervention is the only option. Your vet may need to remove the nail from the pad and treat any underlying infections before you can shift to routine maintenance. In some cases, if the overgrowth hasn’t yet punctured the skin, you can remove it with tweezers first and then start to trim. However, talk to your vet before you start clipping to get safety pointers and advice on your cat’s specific condition.
Train the Quick
As cat nails grow, the quick–the blood vessels and nerves in the nail–elongates. If your cat has light-colored nails, you can clearly see this line of blood. The quick lengthens as your cat’s nails grow. This adds a layer of complexity to trimming overgrown nails because you don’t want to cut your cat’s quick if you can help it. Instead, focus on small, regular trims. As you maintain your cat’s nails, the quick recedes, making those regular trims easier.
Create a Trim Schedule
Include a paw check into your weekly pet health routine so you can spot problems with the nails or any other growths or injuries to your cat’s paws. And, by cutting on a schedule, you’re more likely to stick to the routine and prevent future overgrowth problems.
Keeping up with a trim schedule is also a great way to make the nail trimming process easier and more enjoyable for both you and your cat. An overgrown, thick cat claw is going to be harder to trim potentially causing discomfort. However, a quick trim on schedule will prevent this experience entirely.
How to Avoid Overgrown Cat Claws
You’ve probably heard the saying, “Prevention is the best medicine.” That’s especially true for avoiding overgrown cat claws. Keeping your cat’s nails trimmed should be an ongoing task that’s part of your cat’s regular health routine. Create a schedule for your cat’s nail trims and add it to your calendar so you don’t forget! How often you should trim your cat’s nails depends on your cat and how fast her nails grow, but aim for at least every two weeks–and more often if you’re starting from significant overgrowth.
Regular, ongoing care and maintenance of your cat’s nails should also include scratching options. Oftentimes, when cat lovers assume cats take care of their own nails, they’re thinking about outdoor cats. These cats utilize natural sources like tree bark to keep their claws in check. For indoor cats, we need to provide them with surfaces that replicate nature–but without all the dangers associated with outdoor cats! There are dozens of commercial and DIY options for cat scratching surface options, but the key is to find the surface your cat likes and will actually use.
Recovering from overgrown cat claws takes patience and time. With regular, routine trims and plenty of scratching opportunities, maintaining your cat’s nails will become easier. Allowing your cat’s nails to become overgrown can cause so many avoidable problems. To keep your cat healthy and happy, keep those nails under control! It’s simple to avoid overgrown cat claws. Keeping up with routine nail trims and your cat’s body scan should keep his or her nails under control.
Have you ever discovered an overgrown cat claw? If so, what did you do to take care of it and prevent it from happening again? Join us in our Pet Health 5 Movement and we will help you get started tracking your cat’s health. It’s super easy! On the 5th of each month, we will send out a reminder with a checklist of what to do and how to do it. All you need to do is take 5 to 15 minutes each month to work through the list, check your cat’s health stats and log them.
Cat health is an important aspect of helping our cats live long and happy lives. You can start today by doing a complete body scan on your cat and signing up for Pet Health 5.
About the Author: Maggie Marton writes about dogs, cats, and kids–and often the intersection of all three–for print and web publications and on her award-winning blog, OhMyDogBlog.com. Maggie co-authored Pet Blogging for Love and Money, a guide to launching and running a profitable pet blog. She lives in the Indianapolis area with a dog, two cats, a tank of fish, two preschoolers, and a patient husband.