Mild severity
Paronychia (Nail-Bed Infection)
Infection and inflammation of the skin around a claw and its nail bed, leaving one or more toes swollen, sore and sometimes discharging.
⚠️ Common symptoms
Paronychia is the medical name for an infection of the skin and soft tissue around a cat’s claw, in the nail bed where the claw emerges from the toe. It is essentially a sore, infected toe, and it can range from a minor nuisance affecting one nail to an uncomfortable, more widespread problem involving several.
The most common version is a single inflamed claw. A cat tears or overgrows a nail, picks up a bite in a scuffle, or gets a splinter or grass seed wedged beside the claw, and bacteria take hold in the warm, moist nail bed. The toe swells, reddens and hurts, the cat licks and favours the paw, and there may be a discharge or a brownish waxy crust around the base of the claw. Caught early, this responds well to cleaning, pain relief and a course of antibiotics, sometimes after the vet deals with a damaged claw.
When several claws flare up at the same time, the picture changes. Multi-claw disease is a signal to look beyond the toes — it can be driven by a fungal or bacterial skin infection such as ringworm, by an immune-mediated condition that attacks the nail folds, or occasionally by an illness elsewhere in the body. Here the vet may take samples to pin down the cause and will treat the underlying disease alongside the sore nails.
Because cats hide discomfort so well and a bad toe is easy to miss under fur, paronychia is often noticed only once the cat is visibly limping or fixated on one paw. Regular claw trimming, good parasite and skin care, and a quick look at the paws after any fight or outdoor scrape go a long way to preventing it — and any toe that stays swollen, smelly or painful deserves a vet’s attention rather than home dabbing, since the nail bed is delicate and infections there are genuinely painful.
🔍 Causes
Most single-toe cases start with simple damage — a torn or overgrown claw, a cat-fight bite, or a splinter or grass seed lodged beside the nail — that lets bacteria into the sensitive nail bed. When many claws are inflamed together, the cause is more likely to be a wider skin disease (bacterial or fungal, including ringworm), an immune-mediated nail disorder, or an underlying systemic illness. Overgrown claws that curl into the pad, common in older or less active cats, also set the stage for infection.
🛡 Prevention
Regular claw checks and gentle trimming stop nails overgrowing and curling into the toe, which is a frequent trigger, and giving your cat suitable scratching surfaces helps keep claws healthy. Keeping up flea and skin-parasite control and treating skin infections promptly reduces the wider causes. For indoor-outdoor cats, checking paws over after fights or outdoor adventures helps catch a trapped thorn or a torn claw before it becomes infected.
💊 Treatment
Treatment depends on the cause and how many claws are involved. A single infected nail bed — often from a broken claw, a bite or a trapped foreign body — is usually cleaned and treated with antibiotics and pain relief, sometimes after the vet trims or removes a damaged claw. Warm bathing of the toe may be advised to keep it clean. When several claws are affected at once, the vet will look for an underlying reason such as a fungal or bacterial skin infection, an immune-mediated condition, or, in older cats, sometimes a sign of illness elsewhere in the body, and will treat that as well as the toes. A stubborn or recurrent case may need samples taken to guide the right medication.
⚕️ Medical disclaimer
- This information is educational only and is not a substitute for veterinary advice.
- Symptoms overlap between conditions — only a vet can diagnose accurately.
- Never withhold treatment or self-medicate based on information found online.
- When in doubt, call your vet. Early intervention almost always leads to better outcomes.