Cat Grooming
 | "The AAFCO (Association Of American Feed Control Officials) has now made Taurine a requirement in cat food, so every product labeled 'approved' by the AAFCO does contain a minimum of 0.1% Taurine. That being said, we no longer have concerns about cat blindness due to a vegetarian diet. " |
I've already spoken about cat grooming and cat baths in the behavioral section of this website, but here I want to talk about professional cat grooming.
Whenever I see a report or commercial for cat grooming on TV, with a cat standing in a basin with a bunch of shampoo perched atop their head, I just have a hard time seeing us putting our cats through that now.
We are people who are really into proper hygiene and of course we wanted the cats to be really clean, too. The main problem was that it took them a little longer to get the licking thing down in the beginning because they had no cat mommy. So, once they started running around outside they were just like little dirtballs.
I still can't believe that they figured out the cat bath thing themselves, but I'm happy that they did. And our vet has said that they are very clean cats so all is well in that department.
Anyway, when they were little grubsters we decided that we should bathe them regularly. Even though they were still very young they didn't like it much (except for Bhima who is not particularly bothered by water). There was a lot of crying and the procedure took about 1/2 hour or more per cat - can you believe it! What a production that was.
The main problem with bathing kittens is that they need to be fully dried off before you let them run around again, even indoors. If they catch a cold or other upper respiratory illness, it could be deadly for them.
We used a hair dryer set to low to do the job, but they didn't like the sound of it (never blow directly into the kitten's face!). I don't know if there are other ways to do this, but washing, toweling them off and hair drying was a big for stress for them and of course for us, too.
We had to be extra careful with the wetness, since our cats live outside. So after fur drying we kept them in a bathroom with warm towels for a little while so that their body temperature would normalize.
I do think we would consider cat grooming for a cat that lives indoors only, but I'm glad that we don't have to deal with it. However, if we had a longhaired cat in need of some cream rinse… she would definitely be sent out for grooming!