Posted: July 13, 2010, 3 p.m. EDT
Chloe is an angel, until she sees nail clippers. |
I don’t believe in declawing, so I must provide alternatives to my cats to groom their nails. Those include furnishing the house with vertical cat trees covered in carpet, providing them with cardboard scratchers that sit on the floor and trimming the cats' nails.
The first two are no-brainers. There are three cat trees in the house that I keep near the spots where they sleep, so they can scratch as soon as they wake. They love their trees and have been great about using them instead of my furniture.
The nail-clipping is another story. I have been trimming the cats’ nails since they were young and I do it about every other week. Two of my cats are 9-years-old — you would think by now the cats would be used to nail clipping and just sit there and let me trim them. No such luck.
My sweet, angelic kitties turn into the cats from hell as soon as they sense I’m going to trim their nails. I have to sneak up on Chloe to even get to her nails. I catch her and then hang on tight and clip as fast as I can. She usually manages to scratch me at least once during the process.
Baby is even worse. I wait until he is sleeping, then sneak up on him with clippers in hand. I usually lean on him to control him and clip away. The entire time he screams and squirms. This is the cat that gives me kisses on my cheek every night!
Zooey isn’t too hard to catch. She always wants love so if I call her, she’ll come to me. I put her in my lap and start clipping while she squirms. She jumps off when I’m done like I have cooties.
All of them are congratulated after the clipping and given lots of love. I have special clippers made just for cats and have never nicked their quicks. I’m not sure what is so awful about having one’s toenails clipped, but to them it is the most heinous thing in the world. Luckily, it only occurs every other week.