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Sooo I have a problem. At first, it wasn’t a problem at all but now it is – my three year old medium haired cat Copernicus used to be okay with being brushed back when he had his kitten coat but his pelt has now matured to the point where it mats if I don’t brush it at least once a week. The problem is, he will NOT let me brush him any more – the second I pick up any grooming tool around him he throws up his head and looks at me, then runs away. If I pin him down and try to work on him he tries to bite me and he even starts to growl. The last time I groomed him with my mom’s help using our mat breaker he clawed her really good. It was an accident, but it was pretty deep. I don’t really know what to do. I managed to cut his mats out yesterday but he was extremely combatant and bitey about it and I hate ruining his coat by cutting the mats out – he’s such a handsome cat when he’s brushed!
To compound matters, summer is coming and it gets VERY hot here in southern British Columbia (FYI, Canada can get just as hot as any place in the US like Texas or Arizona) and my area in particular is especially warm, because it’s a semi-desert. (Lots of people vacation here!) What this means, is that if I don’t want to not see either of my fluffy cats all summer (they hid under the couch all of last, vainly trying to keep themselves cool) I need to give them both clips. (Not lion cuts! They have such pretty tails, I could never touch those!) (I should also note that my house has no AC.) Casper isn’t as much of a problem as Copernicus is even though he was a feral baby (though he is extremely skittish,) but Copernicus… ugh. I basically need a way to either make Copernicus calm the heck down and be okay with grooming or muzzle him. I’ve read about cat muzzles and I’m planning on buying one just as soon as I can afford it, but I was wondering if anyone here might have advice for grooming combatant cats? I cannot afford to take my cats to a groomer or the vet or buy a proper clipper this year (next, hopefully) because I have been unemployed for the past eight months (which is really starting to get very old) so I’m probably going to have to use scissors to clip my cats, which I’m not looking forwards to. Casper should be fine with holding still and being a good boy but last summer when I tried to clip Copernicus… well, you can guess. He kept trying to BITE the scissors – NOT a safe situation! Bad cat! He’s also really suspicious – the second he feels me feeling his coat for a mat he gets angry. He’s a really, really sweet, loyal cat, but he seems to think grooming tools are the seed of all evil.
Anyone have any advice or experience? I feel so awful having to muzzle him, but at least with the muzzle he won’t be able to bite and maybe he’ll calm down a little because he won’t be able to see what’s going on. (Cat muzzles cover the eyes as well as wrapping around the jaws.) I know with horses blind folding helps calm them down when they are scared and cats are pretty nervous like that.
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Excellent!
Yep! Same problem with our cat, Puffin. He has a horrible mat problem! I have found that the resistance to combing is only when he has mats.
I know each cat is different, but I bet if you do manage to get rid the mats by cutting them off (or take him to a vet and get the bugger shaved!) and THEN start gently combing him DAILY with a human plastic comb, (not one of those rakes), he probably will learn to love it.As long as it is a regular routine, with lots of petting and attention, and not associated with tugging or pain, our cat has learned to love being combed. He begs for it! He is pretty mat-free now, but still won’t let me groom his legs.
Puffin still absolutely hates the mat rake though, and runs if he sees it.I would recommend shaving him for the summer. He’ll grow out over the summer, and maybe like Melody said he can be convinced to like it.
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Sun Dragon Koi #3I’ll definitely try the plastic human comb – anything to get him okay with the situation! I know the flea comb that I generally use tugs a bit and so does the mat breaker, so perhaps this is his problem?
My mom told me that she tried shaving Copernicus with our human hair trimmer and he freaked out. I’m not sure if you can get quieter ones but I’ve watched some grooming videos that explained how to do it safely. I don’t think trying the human hair trimmer again is a good idea.
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Excellent!
Talk to your vet about tranquilizers. We have to do that with one of our cats, Tanji. She doesn’t like being brushed or even touched much over her hips and she doesn’t groom their either. Fortunately even though she is a medium hair, she doesn’t mat. Her problem is she has “dandruff back there and also gets oily and clumpy. So we give her a kitty tranquilizer, take her outside and pull out the electric trimmer. We used to use my husbands beard trimmer, but it was having issues with her that it didn’t have with our previous cat who was part Maine Coon. So we got the trimmer and still have the problems, so it is the cat, not the shearer. It just means that she doesn’t shear like a sheep – we have to hold the fur up and kind of force the blades through in order to get as much off as quickly as possible. I’ve been told that sometimes the blades need sharpening even straight out of the box, but haven’t followed up on that. The only down side is it takes Tanji about 12 hours to clear the tranquilizer from her system and with mostly tile floors I get yelled at for laughing at her as she slides around. After that I tend to get a cuddle kitty back, especially in the summer.
I’ll bet that Copernicus had a painful and somewhat traumatizing experience with the Mat-cutter. Even though he enjoyed grooming before, the Mat-cutter was probably pulling rather than cutting the fur. I could possibly liken it to being epilated…(anybody remember the “Epilady”?) …OUCHIES! I tried it once, suffered horridly, the promptly tossed it into the trash. “I’ll bet it could make a great torture device!”
I purposely groom all my cats regardless of their coats starting as young as possible. I also handle their paws and clip their claws.
Now, My male cat Ollie comes running to me when I handle his slicker brush. He enjoys being brushed so much that he doesn’t want me to stop. However, my female cat Pixie still does not like it and fusses every time. She tolerates the scant 5 minutes of it, and is happy when I am done.Our older cat Piggywiggs is a Doll-face persian, and we have to shave her down every Spring. When she was younger, she would have to be fully sedated, otherwise she would shred anyone within her reach. Now that she is a senior lady, she seems to understand that we are just trying to keep her comfortable. We still bring her to the vet to be shaved, but she no longer requires sedation.
We have pet clippers at home, but the device overheats quickly and gets too hot to hold. I am sure the blades are dull as stone too! We tried to do it ourselves but the poor girl looked like she was accosted by a lawnmower! 😛Anyways, I would think that if you can get him to a groomer, or a Vet grooming service, they can get Copernicus trimmed down nicely.
Thanks for the advice Dreaming Tree! 😀 (Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been away for a bit.) I don’t think I’d like the mat breaker either frankly, so if that’s his problem, I really can’t blame him.
This week I got my tax return in, so instead of a muzzle I used it to buy an Elizabethan collar (the cone of shame!) which I tried out today. Since I can’t afford a new trimmer at this point or a trip to the groomer (a situation compounded by the fact that I have TWO fluffy cats) I decided to try clipping Copernicus at home with scissors – just a little bit every day, since I’ve heard cats have a ’15 minute grooming threshold’ which you shouldn’t go over. So, because I was worried about accidentally cutting Copernicus with the scissors I used my flea comb as a sort of guard between the scissors and his skin. (I thought this was a good compromise since scissors aren’t exactly a recommended way to clip a cat. But the comb makes things safer I think.) So anyway, today I put the e-collar on Copernicus and – it worked! No biting! I think he was so frustrated by the cone of shame around his neck that he forgot to be worried about what I was doing to his pelt. He started purring like mad almost immediately (it was his ‘please stop doing that Mom’ purr, not his happy purr) and he wiggled a bit, but he didn’t fight. Much safer! It’ll take a few days to get him all clipped down, but eventually I’ll have this cat and his brother short haired for the summer. It’s already getting pretty hot here, so the e-collar purchase came not a moment too soon. It was so nice to groom a non-combatant cat!
When I can afford it I’ll definitely be asking my vet about tranqs though, it would be wonderful if I could just shear off all his fur in one go! Then his fur would look more even too – I have a feeling he’s going to look a bit scruffy once I’m done clipping him with my current method. (Poor boy!) There’s a chance that I will have a job soon, so hopefully I’ll get it and that will help. I’m also going to start using a regular cat brush on my cats to help them like grooming again. They had fleas last year when I first moved back in with my parents (because my then-feral kitten Casper brought them inside when I caught him) and I had to flea comb them a lot, which is probably where their great hatred for being groomed came from.
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Excellent!
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