Black/dark gunk at the base of cat’s claws?

[colbyraye]

My boy Rocky is a nail biter, usually to his back legs but recently has been doing it to one of his front paws. After some inspection, I noticed some scab-like areas on the skin around his claws and some dark colored gunk at the base of ONLY the middle two claws on this foot, the other two are unaffected.
I saw somewhere online that it’s just dead skin, etc., but I’ve never seen this before. He doesn’t like having his paws touched, so I took as good of a picture as possible. Let me know if you have any advice!

 

[catsknowme]

Yikes - that looks uncomfortable. What does your vet say about the nail biting? Perhaps put a little coconut oil on his nails until you can get to the vet. Have you tried "comfort grooming" to calm him down?

 

[colbyraye]

Yikes - that looks uncomfortable. What does your vet say about the nail biting? Perhaps put a little coconut oil on his nails until you can get to the vet. Have you tried "comfort grooming" to calm him down?

He’s not in distress really at all. He puts weight on the paw fine, he doesn’t react when I do touch it besides pulling his paw away, but he does that even with the unaffected paw. That’s why I’m wondering if this is just some weird build up and he’s trying to pick it out on his own. I’m going to take him to the vet hopefully tomorrow, so we’ll see where we go from there!

 

[Felix19+]

Please let us know how u get on at the vets - this is a new one ?