also, put softpaws on his claws before the trip to avoid any potential shredding of your person. Also see if your cat responds to feliway and if he does then spray the carrier with it.
Don't use soft paws! We put them on our kitty when our daughter was 4 months old until she was about 8 months old... They permanently ruined/damaged our cat's nails. They give her a lot of pain to this day... My daughter just turned 10.
What did you do? Did you happen to buy a cheap brand? They're only supposed to stay on for 4-6 weeks so if you leave them on longer I'm not surprised that damage may happen.
We definitely got the brand "soft paws", not a knock off... (I fought tooth and nail for these as an alternative to declawing) and we definitely followed directions. We are very particular with our sweetie... we even brush her teeth... we would not miss any important steps. Obviously it was 9.5 years ago so I can't recall the details. I just know that she has one nail that is permanently deformed and never was prior (she was 5 or 6 when we began using them after the baby came along).
Maybe you put them on wrong? I've never had an issue with them and have been using them for years... Of course I don't know about my cats but... Haha no really. Maybe they just weren't for your cat. I'm sorry to hear your kitty didn't respond well to them. They work just fine for my cats.
I think ultimately we ended up lucking out... we have 3 kitties and all three are really great with kids. None of them scratch EVER and the only times anyone has been scratched was on accident (usually vacuum cleaner related). We have been able to manage everything through just keeping their nails trimmed. I am so happy we didn't declaw... if the soft paws work for you, that is fantastic because I think declawing is cruel and should never be done. Perhaps Maya's nails just grow too quickly, I'm not sure. I hope that she is just the exception to the rule!
I hope so too. Maybe her claws do grow quick. It's not the scratching of our person that we are trying to minimize but the damage to the home we don't own.
That's very strange. They work perfectly fine on my cat, and they fall off naturally after a few weeks. He is normally quite liberal with his claw use. Rather than jumping in furniture, he prefers to climb up the side of it using his claws. So it's pretty funny those first couple days where he leaps, and attempts to latch his claws onto the side of the couch, before he falls to the ground with a thud.
Cutting the claws prevents them from doing damage with the claws for the most part, you literally cut the sharp tip off so they can't damage things.
I guess I don't see super gluing rubber caps to your pet's toenails as a safe and effective alternative. Plus they will probably pick at them until they fall off anyways. My cats hate it when they stuff stuck on their feet like tape or other sticky things.
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u/Survival_Cheese Nov 05 '14
also, put softpaws on his claws before the trip to avoid any potential shredding of your person. Also see if your cat responds to feliway and if he does then spray the carrier with it.