Everyone knows that cats are naturally clear creatures. Your favourite feline is expert within the artwork of utilizing a wet-tongue-and-paw combo to scrub themselves. Nonetheless, that doesn’t imply you’ll be able to skip placing an everyday grooming routine into place. Grooming will be robust should you don’t know what you’re doing. And quite a lot of cat mother and father don’t know what they’re doing! They make cat grooming errors and inadvertently create a anxious grooming course of for his or her fur infants.
Listed below are a number of frequent cat grooming errors and how one can efficiently groom your feline whereas avoiding these errors.
1. Failing to start out grooming at an early age
First up, begin early. For those who’ve simply added a kitten (or two) to the family, train them that grooming periods are protected and enjoyable. Introduce the method slowly and provides loads of rewards and reward.
Perhaps you adopted an grownup cat who’s already handed the kitten stage. Whereas beginning early in life is good, you’ll be able to nonetheless make your grown-up cat comfy from the second you begin grooming. Make it a constructive expertise!
Keep away from a state of affairs the place your cat begins to view the comb as one thing to concern. Too typically, cat mother and father don’t create constructive early experiences with grooming. Their grownup cats fall into undesirable behaviors and get anxious across the brush.
Don’t make that mistake. Begin brushing your cat and utilizing constructive reinforcement shortly after you deliver them house.
2. Not grooming recurrently
It’s a typical false impression to suppose you can get away with simply brushing your cat on the odd event. The reality is that, to your normal short-haired number of feline, you’ll wish to brush not less than a few occasions each week.
If you end up cohabiting with an expensive long-haired kitty, you’ll actually need to be sure to’re operating that brush by way of these locks each single day.
Doing so will assist forestall matting, lower the chance of the dreaded furballs, and provide you with a warning to the presence of any pesky fleas that is likely to be hibernating in that forest of fur.
3. Being too aggressive with mats
In case your cat does seem to have developed matted fur, be at liberty to make use of cat-specific clippers to take away the mats. Nonetheless, keep away from the temptation to choose up a pair of family scissors, which could trigger harm.
By no means pull or yank the mat as that can trigger misery and harm your cat. Additionally, if the mat appears to be cussed, you’re going to wish to schedule a go to to a vet or an expert groomer to soundly take away it.
4. Choosing the fallacious brush
There’s an array of brushes racked up at your native pet retailer for a cause. Various kinds of cats with totally different lengths of hair require various kinds of brushes.
Strive a brush that features a comb on both facet. That manner you’ll be able to get an concept about what’s working and what is likely to be annoying to your kitty.
Additionally, in case your cat appears cautious of the comb, check out a kind of mitts that you simply slip onto your hand and use to groom your feline whereas petting them.
In fact, you’ll be able to take away a few of the guesswork by asking your vet or skilled groomer for suggestions. They’d be glad to assist information and advise.
5. Making the grooming session disagreeable
Strive to make sure that your cat is having fun with the grooming session. You wouldn’t pet your cat towards the grain, so ensure to go along with the fur movement when brushing.
Additionally, take the time to provide somewhat further consideration to areas that ship them right into a state of purred-out bliss, like across the neck and even the nice ol’ base of the tail space.
6. Being inconsistent with nail care
Except you’re clipping your cat’s nails constantly each two weeks, the method is somewhat pointless. You’re higher off guaranteeing that the cat has entry to scratching posts and cardboard scratchers to assist preserve their nails trimmed naturally.
So make the choice to both decide to scheduled nail periods or equipment out your house with appropriate scratch-friendly cat furnishings.