When? How old? He’s 10 weeks now and climbs everything. I particularly don’t want him to claw his way up my chair and onto my lap. He’s very trainable (taught him to stop biting in a day) but I don’t want to discourage him from sitting on me now because when he is older he will be able to do it without crawling up me; and there is nothing nicer than sitting down with a contented cat on your lap.
So, can I start to clip the nails now?
I just got a 3 month old kitten yesterday, and the girl who was caring for her said she had the nails clipped a few weeks ago. So based on my extremely limited knowledge and experience I would think it would be OK.
na matter their age you have to be very careful not to cut too much or they can bleed very badly (more of a danger with dogs bc you can;t see the blood vessels in their nails usually). But now is fine, just be very careful and just clip the very tips (just the points ) to begin with you will have to redo it every few days but it will stop it from learning to climb the furniture and scratch things while it’s still young. At home we always clipped their nails fromt he time the began to scamper about 
. Again just be careful, and the first few times i recomend snuggling little kitty in a BIG towel with only a paw out 
Hope that helps
As long as you’re careful and only clip a tiny bit it should be fine. Some kittens and cats do well when subdued in a towel. Others hate that. The kitten we rescued which JDSmith now has didn’t like the towel, but was manageable when groggy upon awakening from a nap. Trial and error.
You can start cutting a kittens nails when they’re just a few weeks old. So clip away, but don’t do the back ones.
Great. Thanks guys. It should be easy to clip his nails as he’s a very cooperative little guy. That’s part of the reason we kept him. We have two and didn’t want another but after fostering him for a few weeks it was impossible to let him go. Anyway, I will start tomorrow. We made a mistake with our two older ones not to start them yougn and it’s impossible to clip them now. Fortunately they have never been ones to scratch the furniture. They like an old cardboard box or the IKEA shelf in the kitchen.
Why?
because if they are outside at all their back nails are their deffence, if you keep them inside then it’s not very important
They do the damage with the front claws, and they’re sharper. I’ve never had any need to clip the back ones.
If he’s little, you can use human nail clippers.