Cat Nails and Teeth

I have been playfully bitten and scratched by my cat. Those teeth and nails are as sharp as razors. They are almost like bear claws, but on a smaller scale. But most cats are friendly and do not attack people.

Yeah, that's the image of the cat, personified. They've created a sort of mystique people need to overcome to really appreciate the cat as an individual. I've been bitten, scratched and clawed by cats many times, but these cats were all good friends. In one case, a friendly cat was sitting on a galvanized iron roof next door, right next to my place. I went over and said, "So that's what cats do on hot tin roofs..." and started playing with her tail. She swatted me, and stuck a claw through the skin of one finger so it was sticking in like a pin in a shirt, in one place, coming out the other. It was so funny. We both looked at the claw and the finger, stuck together, then looked at each other, like a cartoon. No harm done, and she extracted the claw tactfully, just retracting it. This cat was one of the most genuinely fun people I've ever known, and used to play jokes on me regularly. I have a picture here of her, when she took over a box of plants I'd just brought home from a nursery. I just arranged all the seedlings around her while she slept in the box. It's not the claws and teeth you need to consider, it's the nature of any particular cat. Some are really nice, some are best avoided.