Queen Eva has had her nails trimmed since she was a baby, and had other cats as an example besides, so it's no big deal to her but she doesn't want me to know that.. For her it's not the process, so much as being held against her will. She does prefer to be wrapped in her towel, on my lap, for nail trims, head covered. I pull one paw out at a time. But even though she doesn't move much, she screams the house down, on principle. She's that way about anything, the big scream, so funny.
Tolly used to look away as if he couldn't bear to watch, and Jennie purred, because she just liked me holding her and paying attention to her. Mazy cat took 6 years to train to accept it, one claw at a time, starting with just picking her up, and putting her back down. She hated her paws touched so much, but she had terrible fast growing talons.
I used mayonnaise as her incentive. It took me a while to even find her preferred position. During the years of training I was bringing her to a vet tech at the vet who worked in the boarding kennel, she was the only person in the world Mazy cat would let snip her claws, that was with me holding her draped over my arm on a wooden counter, slipping dots of mayo onto her mouth as the tech snipped away.
At home, after the pick up put down exercise became humdrum I started picking her up and sitting down with her, then releasing her immediately, gradually progressing to touching one paw. Touching each paw. Gently squeezing the paw, and so on. Step by step, it took 6 years of Paw Wrok as I called it, but it was all worth it.
She was funny though once the whole trimming was going on. As I held, her I gave her a swipe of mayo on her lips. She started licking her lips making her yummy noises and I took a paw. The the growling would start, but she was still licking the mayonnaise, I'd be snip snipping away and she'd be like mmmyummymIMWARNINGYOUmmyummycut it outmmmm.... But like I said after that, as time went on even though she was still a bit grumbly she finally trusted me enough to let me do it, as long as she was allowed to complain about it.