Cat Grooming: Checking Nails

Video Transcript

"This is Mittens. Mittens is about 7 weeks old and he's going to help me demonstrate checking nails and looking for extra claws and ingrown nails. In the North East United States where I'm located extra toes in cats are actually very common, although it's not as common in other parts of the country. So what you want to do when you check your cat's nails, is you hold on to the foot and press down on the top and you can see that little nail will extrude there and then you can have it ready to clip. You can also check for any infections or diseases, any redness or pain that might be associated with that. Little Mittens is also going to show us these extra toes, see in there that's an abnormal or extra toe that's in there. Sometimes those will grow over if you don't trim them properly and actually grow into the cat's foot and I just want to show you because he's a good, he's a good cooperator. On his hind feet to he has extra toes, so when you check nails you always want to check for any of those extra toes that you might find and make sure that you trim and care for all of the nails on your cat, both front and hind."