Cat Fur Balls, Hair Mats, And This Award Winning Web Site

The inspiration for this article is my new vacuum cleaner. I have used nothing but bag type vacuums my whole life, but this time, I bought a tornado type vacuum. I am endlessly fascinated by how this vacuum cleaner turns vertical air suction into a lateral swirl that uses the hair, dust, and lint to create a perfect hairball that attracts other hair, lint, and dust into it's mass to form a hairball within the canister. When you are done vacuuming, you just pour the hairball out and that's it. No more bags to buy, and you get to see this perfect hairball form every time you clean. I know the novelty will wear off, but for now, it's amazing.

Cat's get hair balls and mats too. The internal hairballs are already covered in another article on this web site, so go to the search function if that is more precisely the topic you are looking for. Cat fur is subject to getting twisted up on itself and forming a mat. Cat's groom themselves by licking their fur, but sometimes, this isn't enough. When a cat gets matted, it is going to need professional help.
In the worst cases, the hair mats are so bad, the cat gives up on grooming itself completely. Then the mats get worse. I have seen many a cat where the mats became one on top of the cat and then continued to grow to encompass more and more of the top and sides of the cat until it even interfered with their ability to walk. We did a lot of cat grooming and the Cat Hospitals of Denver over the years and most of our patients came in really matted.

Our standard procedure was to sedate the cat and shave it's whole body. Our most common clip was called a Lion Cut and it involved shaving the body, but leaving the head, legs, and tail still covered in fur, so the cat looked like a little lion. The clients were very satisfied with this grooming procedure and many came in early in the summer to get a lion cut for their cat just for the cool sleek look it gave them.

We had a few stray cats that we fed out the back door of CHD that got very matted too. One was named "Jaws" because his jowls were so big and thick from being un-neutered and from fighting with other tom cats so frequently. I saw Jaws groom himself one day as he sat and just ripped his mats off with his teeth. Nature has a way of solving it's own problems. The best way to avoid hair mats on your cat is with regular combing. A steel comb is best because it penetrates down through the fur to get to the deeper levels and clears away any hair tangles.

Congratulations go out today to Rebecca Anderson, a former CHD employee, who is expecting her second daughter in February of 2010. Also, Thanks go out to http://www.i-love-cats.com/ for designating us as one of their Award Winning Cat Web Sites. We appreciate the honor!

Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/ http://www.lifeextensionbooksbydrdougikeler.blogspot.com/