My sons cat 8 Ball (God rest her soul) would only drink water off of her paw. Her whole life thats the only way she would drink. We never saw her drink water any other way. My new 8 pawed cat hasnt done anything remarkable yet with her big paws except swat little quanah in the head. He seems to be recovering slowly. Now hes intimidated by her. So now they are taking turns being out. Well she goes back in her cage now at night because that seems like when shes most active. Now Quanah is in the bedroom while she has run of the living room. I dont want to leave them together unsupervised.

Thank you Michael for a very interesting and informative article.
Cats can’t speak the same language as us, but as you say they do communicate with us by touch.
Vets and nurses can test how deeply unconscious a patient is by testing the reflex in the paw along with the reflex of the eye and that’s how we did that before all the fancy anaesthetic machines with readings came along.
The paws are very sensitive and that makes declawing a very cruel and extremely painful operation for cats.
How I wish all vets would admit this and stop declawing.