A few years ago, my husband and I got a cat. At that time, he was five years old (the cat, not my husband) and had been an indoor/outdoor cat for a while. For various reasons, I don’t let my cats go outside, so he became an indoor cat when we got him.
He adapted really well to this, with one exception: clawing. He shredded everything in sight. We actually discussed declawing him (which I have never done and wouldn’t want to do, especially to an older cat), and then we found these cool things called Soft Paws.
Soft Paws are rubber tips you glue on to kitty’s claws; they keep him/her from scratching carpet/upholstery/whatever. They’re great.
I know this board has quite a few cat people, and many of us don’t want to declaw our kitties. Soft Paws are a very humane alternative, but they’re pretty unknown. So … in the interest of felines and couches everywhere, I am making myself available as a source of Soft Paws information.
I know of Soft Claws but for the life of me I can’t imagine one of my kitties allowing me to attach them for anything. I have zero doubt she’d shred me in the process if I did try (she is one majorly cranky cat). Even our nice cat I doubt would sit still for it but at least with that one I wouldn’t fear for my skin if I tried (at least not worry too much).
Same Q’s as Whack! We have a new Siamese kitten who is contently climbing our walls. (we live in a modern Log A Frame home) And we have heard about soft paws… but how do you get them on, and how long do they last .
They last about four weeks or so. The first ones might not last as long; it takes a while for the kitties to get used to them, so they try to pull them off at first. And yeah, your cranky cat might not let you do it. If you order them from their website, the vet that invented them sends his (her? can’t remember) email address in case you need help enabling your kitty to adjust.
Our cat Ace doesn’t enjoy having them put on, but he tolerates it. Usually, I hold him and Mr. Skeptic puts them on. He (Ace, not Mr. Skeptic) gets a little squirmy if he has to have several put on. We have special treats he (again, Ace) gets only after having them put on; that helps somewhat.
I just wish we would’ve found these before he shredded a corner of a $1500 chair.
ADDITIONAL INFO: I forgot to mention that Soft Paws comes in several fashion colors. Ace is currently sporting purple.
Phlosphr, they come with a special glue. You trim the cat’s claws, fill the Soft Paws partially with the glue, then gently slide them over the claws. (This is all best done when the cat is in a sleepy/laid back mood.) They come off naturally as the claw grows.
I’m guessing that getting a kitten used to them would be easier than working with a full-grown cat, although our cat wasn’t too much of a problem. They come in four sizes, and one is just for kittens.
We used them with two of our cats and had no luck. Both cats would pull them off within days. One cat needed to be drugged to have them applied. (Course, she was the cat they wanted to give kitty prozac to because she was so psycho).
Both we gave several weeks of trying.
However, I haven’t owned any cats in over a year, and my SoftPaws experiment was well over five years ago. The adhesive may have gotten better.
Give them a try if you are anti-declawing - they may work for you and save your furniture/drapes/skin.
Yes, they can retract their claws, Whack. You can still see the colored tips, though. It’s kind of cute. (You can get clear, too, if you don’t want colored. I like the colored because it’s easy to tell if he needs one replaced. Plus, like I said, it’s cute.)
The adhesive must have been improved since Dangerosa tried them, though. That stuff STICKS; you don’t want to get it on your fingers. Most cats will try to pull the Soft Paws off more at first, but then they get used to it. Now, if the adhesive wasn’t very sticky (as apparently is used to not be), they’d just pull them off every time. (You do have to keep the adhesive in the fridge, though, or it loses moisture and stickiness.)
Ace is fanatical about cleaning himself, including his paws, and he only gets the Soft Paws off when his claws have grown out enough (after a month or so). Basically, his claws get long enough to annoy him, and he removes the outer sheath of his claw along with the Soft Paw. We then trim the claw and apply a new one.
We’ve tried Soft Paws on two of our cats, without very successful results. One of the cats was ok, but we noticed that when she lost one it took a good deal of claw along with it (more than would normally shed during the same time period.) The other cat hates hates HATES them, and tried to scratch/bite/kick/maim us whenever we tried to put them on. I don’t know if we’ll be buying more; they’re pricy for what they are. (no question, I guess, just my own personal experience)
Okay, I have two kittens, both of whom are obsessed with clawing a brand-new chair I have. I trim their claws weekly, but this seems to encourage them to sharpen their claws on the chair.
I’m wondering: once you put the Soft Paws on, do they still try to claw things like furniture? If so, are the Soft Paws totally successful in preventing damage to the upholstery? Or does it simply lessen the problem? Do cats who wear Soft Paws stop clawing behavior when they realize it’s not working like it should?
Cats wearing SoftPaws don’t stop their clawing behavior (I’ve also witnessed that declawed cats still “scratch” like normal cats.) However, the SoftPaws are rounded and sort of blunt, so all scratching is pretty much harmless. They’re shooting blanks, so to speak.
(hehe. Sorry, I know this isn’t my thread, I just thought I’d add my $.02 worth.)
Well, Phoebestar, we cat “owners” know that they can be pretty opinionated. It’s too bad Soft Paws and your cat aren’t compatible; they’re great when they work. Luckily, Ace got used to them pretty quickly. The first application does seem pricey because you’ve got to do all 10 claws, but after that it’s not bad. (IIRC, it’s about $21 from the site for one package, which includes 40 nail caps and two tubes of glue.) Plus, if I can save my couch and carpet, I’m money ahead.
Q.N.: I can’t speak for every cat, but Ace does still try to claw the carpet and furniture sometimes. He just can’t get a grip, and so he doesn’t cause any damage. (It’s analagous to trying to scratch someone’s back with your nails cut down to the quick.) He does seem to be learning, though; his scratching activity has gone down somewhat. Of course, that may be partially because we keep his claws trimmed.
BTW, I’ve had cats that I successfully trained to claw only their scratching posts, probably 'cause I had them from kittens. I tried to do that with Ace, but he’d had five years of scratching whatever tree he wanted to, so it didn’t take. (He doesn’t seem to get the concept of burying his poop, either; he just leaves it in the litter.) If I could have trained him to scratch only his post, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of buying the Soft Paws.
Another bit of info about Soft Paws–you can use Super Glue with them instead of the supplied adhesive. When our cat had to wear them for awhile (not because he was clawing up the furniture, but because he had a skin allergy and was scratching chunks out of his fur) our feline allergist told us that Super Glue worked better than (and was just as safe as) the adhesive that comes with the Soft Paws.
When did you use Soft Paws, winterhawk11? Because Dangerosa found the glue not too sticky, either. The included glue is now at least as sticky as Super Glue, if not more so. Maybe they’ve changed it to be stickier; my husband’s glued himself to the cat more than once.
We used them a year or so ago, maybe a year and a half, and we were less than impressed with the sticking power of the adhesive. Sounds like they’ve improved it since then. If we ever need to go back to using Soft Paws again, we’ll give it a try.
Thank you very much for the answers. I’ve seen pictures of the claw covers but couldn’t tell if they were blunt enough to prevent a grip entirely. I was envisioning them punching even bigger holes into my upholstered furniture.
I hope you don’t mind me asking this here, but has anyone else tried those No Scratch sprays? I have tried one and it didn’t work. My kitty Oedipuss Rex jumped up on the chair right away, sniffed it a bunch, and twitched spastically while examining it, but then settled down to a nice scratching/sleeping session immediately thereafter. Are there any brands that do work?
It should be said that this cat - Anastasia - tends to be a tad vicious whenever she feels she’s being manhandled. Or touched at all, really, if you’re not Phoebestar. After application she spends quite a lot of time chewing and tearing at the soft paws with her mouth, helping pull them off prematurely and doing a number on her natural claw.
I used softpaws on my polydactyl. He tolerated them well, but developed a nasty infection in one claw… I could tell what it was because I had the same thing happen to me when I had cheapo acrylic nails.
I kept it cleaned out and everything turned out okay, but soft paws users be warned - wipe those claws with alcohol or something first, because you may trap an infection under that thing.
