Cut her nail too close

I was trimming Zissou's nails, partly because she's going to the vet on the morrow and partly because she was shredding my screens. I'm always sooo careful, I've done this, what every week since last November and never had any accidents.

Well, I got to the last one, her pinky toe on her left foot, and she suddenly jerked her foot and hissed (she has never hissed at me before) and ran off, jumped up into the windowsill... and I noticed she wouldn't put any weight on that foot.

I came over to investigate, and there were little blood smears on the marble I, of course, began crying and apologizing to her and she isn't mad at me, but I can tell her poor little foot hurts. She is walking on it, and the claw is still there just much too short, no permanent damage but I feel horrible. Her poor tootsie is fine, and she's cleaned it up but there's a little blood matted in her toe.

Is there anything I can do about it? The bleeding wasn't severe and stopped pretty fast... I don't know what styptic powder is.

I don't know if she's ever gonna let me trim her claws again.

I feel so sad and awful.

She'll probably be a little leary for a while if you touch the claw, but I doubt she'll hold a grudge. The styptic power is to stop the bleeding as if you really cip into the "quick", it'll bleed pretty bad. I doubt you did much damage if it didn't bleed much and stopped quickly. On the bright side, the quick will be shorter on that claw in the future making it harder to clip. Just keep an eye on it as it'll be a little tender and prone to irritation until it heals a little more.

Syptic powder is a clotting agent that will stop an animal from bleeding when you hit a vein while cutting their nails- honestly, as someone who's worked around hundreds of animals- save some money and use some regular all purpose white flour-it does the exact same thing, vets use it all the time,and it is non-toxic and inexpensive- . Put some flour in a small dish and hold her toe in it to stop bleeding in the future should u ever nip another vein. Remember, only cut the tips of the nails. Accidents happen, don't beat yourself up over it . I'm sure she's forgive you by now. In the future i would suggest wrapping her up in a blanket with only her head poking out...and do one paw at a time and then put it in the blanket and pull out the next one- this technique give you more freedom to manipulate her and keeps her from squirming as much to avoid cutting a nail too short I hope your night gets better. Apply some neosporin (just regular neosporin) to her toe several times a day until it heals. She should be just fine

I think everyone has to go through this at some point . If you ever experience a lot of bleeding, you can keep some talcom powder on hand or even just using flour works to clot the blood. I wish I had known about the flour. When Cayko was born I was holding this newborn kitten with a gushing foot from having 2 toes bitten off, talk about freaked out...kittens can only lose so much blood... I was frantically looking for our talcom powder and it would have been so much easier to just go in the kitchen and grab the flour.

Usually the toes won't bleed to much like what you experienced. And everyone does it at some point so don't feel to bad .

Edit: oh I didn't realize someone had already mentioned the flour!

I think she's all better now! She doesn't seem to be mad at me... well, for taking her to the vet, but she's over that too now.

I will def. try the flour trick in the future. And I'll try the blanket idea. She never used to get very squirmy or upset about nail trimmings, so I didn't consider the need for one before.

I'm so sorry about Cayko. He's such a special little man.

She's cleaned all the blood off, and it seems to be healing nicely. I just hope she lets me do them again.

Thank you all!