Maybe it's an American thing. You guys have a way of streamlining the language, taking out extraneous letters so the spelling makes sense.

I agree with MMario, though. If I saw "kittens paws" I wouldn't know how many kittens were involved.

I came across exactly this situation while editing some text for publication. The writer had referred to "the rail operators 837 complaints." Rail deregulation here means several train companies may have services on the same piece of track. I didn't know whether he meant one or all of them - context didn't make it clear. That's why punctuation's important!