There is nothing to FEAR in Cat Grooming

I find that a lot of groomers will not touch a cat as they fear so much biting and scratching and cats losing their mind!

Let’s cover some rumours for cat grooming:

Cats hate baths and go crazy with the dryer

Actually, it’s rare a cat will ‘go crazy’ in the bath. Slowly introduce the water, once a cat is wet, most will sit there and accept the bath. You should know what to do in case of flail if it does occur. Most cats will easily accept drying at a low speed, while being burrito wrapped.

What do I do if a cat flails? (panics) (extract from Bathing the Feline online course)

“If a cat is to flail (lose control), DO NOT put your hands in front of it, if you cannot stop before they go crazy, let them flail. They will generally flip, let them do so, but controlled in the area you can continue to help them. Keep hands over them to keep control, but not in the face. If needed use a towel. Stop the bath, if shampooed then try and rinse by bucket or any means necessary, but do not continue bathing. You will get bitten. In this case, they would have to go home wet as it would be too dangerous for you and the cat to continue.

This is the flight response but in extreme circumstances, where they think that it is life or death, you cannot reason with this. Most owners will know whether their cat will lose control in the bath. A lot of cats that are aggressive can be bathed, but ‘flail’ cats are usually the scared shy kind that can turn aggressive for fright alone.”

Clipping cats is scary

Clipping cats is not scary at all. Once you have a procedure of how a cat is clipped, including your preferred handling and understanding the skin and anatomy, most cats are easy to clip and take less than 20-30 mins to do so.

Cats bite and scratch the groomers

Assess every cat’s temperament and watch for stress signs, to prevent escalating to the point of biting and scratching. Biting and scratching is a cats fight motion (flight, fright, fight). Most of the time, the bites you see on social media are a result of someone ignoring signs and pushing a cat past it’s limits. Every time I’ve been bitten, it’s a result of me being complacent. I don’t believe we should have to groom every cat. Some cats require sedation or medical behavioural support.

Want to learn more about preventing bites and enjoying the grooming process, learn more on my courses, behaviour for the cat groomer, clipping the feline, bathing the feline.