Basic Grooming for Cats

Learn how to take care of a cat with this instructional step by step guide - Basic Grooming.

Hi, I am Dr. Candy Olson from Greenbriar Animal Hospital. We’re shooting a series of videos on how to take care of your cat at home. This particular one is how to groom your cat using a couple of special tools. This is Tashie, shes going to be helping us out with this. Shes not real thrilled with the idea of getting combed with this stuff, but shes a pretty patient cat. There are a couple of things that are important to know. They make a lot of brushes for cats, and brushes are good for finishing, they go over the top, but even if you’ve got a short haired cat, its important to get down to the skin when you’re grooming. So, you really need something like this with rigid teeth, or this is what’s called the mat splitter, this particular comb is not sharp here on these points, but on those little curves there is actually a little blade, so that it will go through, and it helps if they’re starting to get some little knots. Tashie tends to have a very thick coat. So, you can see when you just gently go with this that -- she says, we have all kinds of coat coming out, and it doesn’t pull, so she doesn’t mind it, but you can get a lot of this undercoat out, and it wont cause problems with leaving bare spots or anything like that. Now, if she had a knot forming there, you wouldn’t want to use this on the knot, because you will have to really pull and tug, and she won’t like that. But say she had a little knot here, what you would want to do is pick at it a little bit from the side, just little bits at a time until you can get through it. It’s really important not to cut a mat out on a cat, because it’s so easy to cut their skin. So, if they have a mat that you can’t comb out, the best thing to do is to contact your vet, or to find somebody who grooms cats, because they can get it out. Sometimes cats need to have their coat shaved. So, that’s not an uncommon thing too. If there are no knots, and you don’t have to get through this thick undercoat, this kind of comb also works really well, because it does get right down to the skin, and so you’re not just going over to the top. What you want to do is do little bits at a time, so that you’re not concentrating on one area, and watch for those things like the ears back, and that kind of thing. Now Tashi, we do this to her all the time, she comes in on a regular basis for this, and so we know in her case that shes okay with this, even though shes doing a little bit of grumbling, but this is really typical for her, and she likes this part right here. Every cat has areas of the body that they like to have combed, and areas that they don’t, so this is her thing, she is kind of leaning into the comb a little bit, and relaxing a little bit. So, you want to work on them little bits at a time. If you’re working back here and you notice that she is starting to fidget a little bit, then you want to stop and go work on a different area of body. It also helps with cats to do this in short sessions, so that it’s not a little big long thing. If you do find that the coat is getting away from you, whether the knots are just getting too thick or your cats not cooperative with letting you comb them, contact your veterinarian, and find out if they can help you out with some grooming. So, that’s the big information for grooming, and these special tools for cats. Tashie, thank you for your cooperation. Next, we’re going to show you how to trim your cats toenails.