How to Keep Kitty Coats in Shape

The amount of time you spend grooming your cat’s fur depends on a couple factors, primarily the kind of coat your cats has. With their long, silky coats, Persians and Himalayans need daily brushing, combing, and detangling, frequent baths, and even professional grooming on occasion. Other long hairs, such as short hairs or the fine fur of some of the lighter-coated pedigreeds, such as the Cats with medium or short coats are fine with weekly grooming and a bath now and then – more frequently if you have allergy sufferers in the home or if you’re especially sensitive to finding hair everywhere. For most cats, though, you just want to pitch in often enough to ensure that mats aren’t forming and fannies are kept clear of debris.

Combing and brushing

Short-, medium-, and wired-haired cats are a breeze to groom after you get your cat used to the idea of being touched by grooming tools. Run the comb through your cat’s fur, follow with the slicker brush or grooming glove, and then step back and admire the shine!

One benefit of short haired cats: You can use a flea comb on them. Flea comb have narrowly spaced teeth that catch the little bloodsucker where they eat: on your cat. To use one, comb with the fine comb first and then flea comb from the skin out, a tiny bit at a time, flicking the pests into a bowl of warm, sudsy water as you go. After you’re done, flush the fleas away – most of them are drowned by then anyway.

You need to realized, however, that combing fleas from your pet does not solve a flea problem. See “Keeping external parasites under control,” total flea control is necessary also to solve this problem

For long haired cats, a flea comb is hard to used, and grooming is a little more involved.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Divide your cat’s coat into sections with the “medium” or “coarse”

comb and work through the fur slowly and gently.

2. Repeat Step 1, but this time use the fine-toothed comb.

3. Follow with a brushing, and again work with a small section at a time, using the pin brush.

4. Don’t forget lots of praise!

Pay special attention to the areas where the legs meet the body, behind the ears, and under the tails – all places that are mat magnets for long haired cat.