Cat Care: Nail caps

By Tracy Carreiro
Tracy Carreiro

Tracy Carreiro is a graduate of Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. She has been a practicing veterinarian for nearly 20 years. Growing up on a dairy farm, she grew to love the farm cats and spend many hours as a child taming feral kittens. During her career, she has been involved in treating animals of all sorts, from mice and other pocket pets through exotic birds, dogs and cats. She has also cared for large animals such as horses, cows and even exotic animals including an elephant, a wallaby, and a camel. She loves teaching her clients about their pets, and school children about responsible pet ownership. She also develops workshops and training sessions for veterinary staff members and other health care professionals. She is currently the Shelter Veterinarian at the Faxon Animal Rescue League in Fall River, where she sees many animals surrendered due to behavior problems in the home. She lives with her husband, two children, five cats and a bird.

www.faxonarl.org

When caring for a cat, nail caps are a great, less invasive alternative to de-clawing. Use nail caps with tips from an animal rescue volunteer in this free video on cat behavior.

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Video transcription

One of the methods that has been used for generations is to de-claw cats to prevent them from scratching. As time has gone by there is some controversy about whether de-clawing is appropriate in cats. It's a surgical procedure and it's actually an amputation of their first digit. So we try to do a lot of other things before we resort to de-clawing, and one of these things that we can try is to apply nail caps to your cat's nails. So these small little soft, flexible nail caps fit right over your cat's nail, sort of like a fake nail in people. These are red just so they'll show up, but they come in all different colors, including clear, so they're almost invisible when they're on your cat. And how they're applied is that you clip your cat's nails, not too short but slightly shorter than normal, and then you put a little bit of adhesive inside the nail cap, and then fit it right over your cat's normal nail. And it has a soft, blunted edge, so even if your cat scratches it can't do any damage to your furniture or your walls. These nail caps usually last four to six weeks, and once your cat gets used to them they act completely normal with them on.