Polydactyl Bo, 25 toes and counting!

Just a quick question...Our 5 month old polydactyl tuxedo cat has 25 toes altogether. He loves to have his feet rubbed and is beginning to tolerate having his nails trimmed (for a treat of course). My question, I did this to help him from "tic-tac-ing" as I call it (the nails hit the linoleum as he walks and it makes a noise like dropping tic tacs) across the floor. Also, when he walks on berber carpet at my parents house while on vacation his nails get stuck. After trimming, he still is tic-tac-ing. Upon closer inspection I realized two of his toes are totally unretractable and malformed. The others are fine and do retract. Is this a dangerous situation to have these huge claws out all of the time and getting stuck on stuff? We were planning on de-clawing them but after reading all the crap this site said about NOT doing it we decided NOT TO DO IT!!!Anyone have any advice? (not so short after all!) -Jess

My adivce is to keep working with the cat on getting him used to having his paws handled, and keep trimming the nails with SHARP cat nail trimmers. You can get a cleaner snip that way, and not have to worry about it getting stuck on carpet, also perhaps you could look into filing his nails down if you have a problem with the clippers not doing a clean enough job.

My cats run around this house many times a day, hauling butt and they have their claws out while doing this, they don't get stuck on anything ever, but it sure sounds like ripping velcro!

You should be trimming your cats claws once a week. Or maybe even invest in SoftPaws this might be the best alternative for you.

And of course, speak with your vet and see what he says about these claws that wont retract and have him/her examine the healthiness of his nails, see if they are brittle or cracking when you trim them etc.

PS: My Asim is also a poly, he has 26 toes

I have a poly and I had to get one of his dewclaws removed by declaw BUT it was barely hanging by a thin piece of pad, and so far up his leg that it never made contact with the floor. So there was no toe removed, no bone removed, the vet just cut the pad and the nail away and stitched Bartee up.

His claws do the same thing yours does, and I just find that trimming them often with a correct pair of trimmers- not ones made for humans helps a great deal. He has 21 toes, not 25 and we almost named him BlackJack...

I too would try and trim those particular claws more often. If you keep them closer to the quick, they will stay shorter. Also, like Hissy said, if it does become a serious problem, I would talk to the vet about amputating that particular toe. It is much less painful and a routine surgery. They do it with dogs all the time, but it's so rare in cats, people don't think about it