How to Groom Your Cat (When the Cat Has Opinions)

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Brushing Thelma and Louis is a little bit of a dance. They’ll tolerate it, but they have to be in the mood, and if you have a cat you know that mood comes and goes. Thelma is usually the more relaxed one and will let us brush her, calmly, for a few minutes. Louis likes it at first, then goes and hides in their play tube. Then he comes back out, we try again, he’s fine for a minute, then back in the tube.

It surprised me that they weren’t in love with it, because the cat I grew up with, Crystal, a Himalayan, had a whole Sunday routine with me. I was a pre-teen, and every Sunday I’d brush her fur, give her a little tube of vitamin, clip her nails, and brush her teeth. She was super docile and let me do all of it, which is really funny to me now, because I was a CHILD and she was fine with it. But Thelma and Louis have just been a whole other story. I guess you’ve gotta just work with what you’ve got!

So, this is the grooming guide for the rest of us. The ones whose cats have opinions. To help, we’ve put together expert advice from cat behaviorists and veterinarians, and pulled other real-life scenarios from cat owners on Reddit. Because maybe like you, we love seeing what works in other people’s houses. From weekly brushing to dealing with mats, nails, ears, eyes, teeth (and the bath you’ll probably never give) it’s all here.

If you’re mostly here for the shopping list, there’s a list of the grooming essentials to look for toward the bottom.. And remember, if you have any questions, just let us know in the comments!

Why brush a cat who grooms herself all day

This might be the question you’re asking yourself right now. We all see the time our cats spend grooming. According to Cornell’s Feline Health Center, cats spend 30 to 50 percent of their day grooming themselves. Dr. Pamela Perry, an animal behavior resident at Cornell’s vet college, calls it “a huge chunk of their day,” which basically means that if you look over at a cat, there’s a good chance they’re licking themselves.

But here’s what’s important to note. Even though they’re grooming all day long, the problem is where all that hair goes. A cat’s tongue only moves hair in one direction (down the throat), so every loose hair your cat licks up gets swallowed. It then either passes through their system or comes back up as the hairball you step in with your bare foot at 6 a.m. Think of brushing as a great way to prevent that. Not to mention all the cat hair you might find around your house. (Do you even wear black shirts anymore? I do not.)

Jackson Galaxy, one of our favorite cat daddies, makes another great point in his brushing video that helps put even more importance on it: brushing “helps you inspect your cat.” You’re checking for fleas, injuries, lumps, sore spots, anything that wasn’t there last week. When your hands are on your cat a few times a week, you catch the small stuff while it’s still small. You, your cat, and your vet will thank you for it.

Brush the sleepy cat, not the zoomies cat

If I could give every frustrated cat owner one piece of advice from all the expert material I’ve been through, it’s this one. Don’t brush your cat when they are running around you in circles and clearly have other things on their mind. You want them calm and relaxed, just like Galaxy echoes below:

Wait until she’s not the hyper monkey, you know, walking around the house… she’s more like the sleepy monkey, and you guys are having one of those moments of just quiet on the couch. Your brush is next to you at all times… If she’s lying on her side, we just do a few little things as you’re talking gently to her, just a few little things, then we stop.

— Jackson Galaxy, on his YouTube channel

He also explains the science behind why some cats flip from loving the brush to swatting it, which I never knew and makes me now feel bad all those times I kept trying to brush Thelma or Louis when they were clearly running away from it: hair follicles have receptors, which he describes as “almost sort of antennas.” In some cats those receptors don’t shut off as the brushing continues, so it “goes from feeling really good to feeling really like, oh,” and after a little while that turns into pain. So when a cat flips from purring to swatting mid-session, that’s usually overstimulation, and the tail will tell you first: if it starts swishing while you brush, that session is over whether you want it to be or not.

The cat owners of Reddit have clearly learned the same lesson:

Some cats get agitated. Don’t overdo it, watch the signs. One of ours likes it very much, but 4-5 brushes full of hair is enough. The other, shorter hairs, loose skin, is much more sensitive. Brushing is really about communicating.

— via Reddit.com

That really sounds like our Louis. He can take it for about a minute, then needs a break. Now I know why!

The right brush is whichever one your cat votes for

You might need to try a few different cat brushes, I know we did. The “right” brush will be the one that your cat seemingly agrees with.

Not sure where to start? Or maybe you’re looking for a new type of brush because the other one isn’t working? VCA says a stiff bristle brush handles most short coats with a weekly session, while long, silky, or curly coats need a long-toothed metal comb and DAILY attention, because mats build up around the ears, in the armpits, and along the back of the legs before you notice them. Jackson Galaxy’s personal pick is a slicker brush, the one with the tightly spaced metal teeth. The only tool he warns against is the soft-bristled kind that looks like it belongs on your bathroom counter: “that’s a hairbrush, it’s not going to separate anything, it might feel good but it’s not going to do the job.”

I remember when our cats were kittens I bought the cutest little soft bristle pair of brushes, they looked like little baby brushes! I took one pass over each cat with them and it picked up literally nothing. LOL. Into the basket it went and never came back out! I still have them though.

That’s not always the case with human-type hair brushes, though. This cat took its owner’s brush and wasn’t sorry about it:

My cat hated the slicker-type brushes and the combs meant for pets. By accident I discovered he liked my hairbrush. It is now his hairbrush. It’s a Tangle Teezer and does a great job picking up all of the loose hair. … It’s the pink one too. He will not let me brush him with anything else. I had to buy a new for myself. It’s blue. He doesn’t want it. Only his pink one.

— via Reddit.com

A cat with a strong preference for a pink-colored Tangle Teezer is the most cat thing I’ve ever heard. Which is why I love cats!

For the committed brush-haters, go slower than feels reasonable

Cats Protection has a great training sequence on how to get your cat used to grooming, including suggestions for how to pace it. First, you just stroke your cat with your hands in the spots you’ll eventually brush, keeping the brush nearby so your cat can inspect it on their own time. Then, give them a quick brush or two, then stop. Afterwards, give them a treat as a reward. This is what they call a “groom, stop, reward” technique. Each time your cat lets you brush them, stop after a few strokes. Then reward them with a small treat. And so on and so forth. Next time you groom, increase the number of strokes before you stop. For a really wary cat, the beginning process could take days or even weeks. Which sounds like forever but it has to start somewhere!

Cat owners on Reddit also figured out the same thing, with snacks:

I let him smell [the brush] and did a very short session and gave a few treats.. I did this a few times through out the week and sometimes a few times a day.. each time he let me go longer. Eventually, I was able to introduce the older brushes that he hated again and he was pretty cool about it as long as he still got his treats

— via Reddit.com

Treats are the universal cat language, it seems. And for the cats who’d rather fight the brush than be groomed by it, I loved this workaround:

I have to use two brushes. I keep one by his face to keep him occupied (he likes to bite and rub against it) while I use the other to brush his body.

— via Reddit.com

I can see this working! We have two brushes as well, but I’m mostly worried either Thelma or Louis is going to hurt themselves on the sharp brush spikey things. But maybe I’ll use that old baby brush to keep near their face instead. LOL.

Mats: whatever you do, don’t get the scissors

When you find a small tangle, just like with your own hair ladies, work it apart with your fingers. Then comb it out gently from the edges in. Cats Protection suggests rolling an upright comb over a small mat to loosen it rather than tugging through it. For anything bigger, VCA’s rule is only use clippers, never scissors to help prevent any injuries. And that means electric clippers, the buzzing kind a groomer uses, not nail clippers. A tight mat pulls the skin up into it, so scissor points can’t tell where the mat ends and the cat begins, while electric clippers sit flat against the skin and shave the mat off.

A professional groomer on Reddit said the same thing:

Please don’t advise people to use scissors to cut out mats. I’m a groomer and I’ve seen COUNTLESS injuries caused by doing just this. When the mats are really tight, it can be extremely hard to tell where the skin ends and the hair begins, especially on cats.

— via Reddit.com

Mats aren’t just ugly, they hurt. Jackson Galaxy describes what’s actually happening under one:

It’s really painful. It gets close to their skin. Their skin is like tissue paper, really… you’re going to see cats over time stop moving around too much, because they just don’t want it to hurt. They’ll stop using the litter box because squatting hurts.

— Jackson Galaxy

If the matting is tight, widespread, or somewhere delicate, contact a trusted groomer or take a trip to the vet so a professional can handle it. After that you can begin your new grooming routine with a fresh start and zero mats. It’s safer and often quicker and ends with less tears (from you).

The rest of the routine at our house

Nails. Cory does the nail clipping in our house. He sits on the edge of the tub with his reading glasses on LOL so he can see correctly, with each cat’s back against his chest. If one of them gets antsy I come in and start singing. Even though I have a terrible singing voice Thelma and Louis seem to like it. If you want the full routine (including the tools we use) I wrote a whole article on trimming your cat’s nails without a fight.

Ears. In our house, ears are a two-person job: Cory holds Thelma or Louis, and I gently clean. Both cats are better about this than they are about brushing, because it’s usually pretty quick and not as annoying to them it seems. I only do this if I see something in their ears. (VCA says most cats never need it.)

If your vet does recommend it, ask them for the exact product and technique. Some vets will advise you to use a cat ear cleaning solution (never hydrogen peroxide or alcohol), which you put in before massaging the base of the ear for about thirty seconds. Let your cat shake, and then wipe whatever comes up with a cotton ball. A cotton swab NEVER goes in the ear canal, and an ear that’s red, swollen, painful, or smelly goes to the vet before anything touches it.

We use just simple ear cleaning pads and that’s it!

Eyes. Thelma sometimes gets a little gunk in the corner of her eyes, and if she’s calm I can wipe it away with a clean eye pad (we have ear pads and eye pads, I’ve listed them below) while she just sits there. Don’t ever use your fingers or anything else that isn’t sterile.

If you see any cloudiness, squinting, constant tearing, or discharge that keeps coming back, call your vet. You want to make sure it’s not something serious like a retina scratch, which Louis has been tested for before but thankfully never had.

Teeth. We are currently in the process of trying to get better at this ourselves. We tried brushing when they were younger, they wanted nothing to do with it, and we let it slide. I still feel guilty about it. 🙁 Thelma’s teeth have checked out great at every visit. Louis has always had a little brown near the gums, and he’s already had one professional cleaning under sedation. It went well, but I still hated every minute of the sedation part. Which is why this is my top priority right now. Everything we’ve learned about doing better is in our cat dental care article.

Baths: you can almost always skip them

VCA calls cats “fastidious groomers” who rarely require a bath, and that lines up with every vet I’ve ever asked. The real exceptions are pretty specific: your cat got something on her coat that she shouldn’t lick off (if it might be toxic, call your vet or a pet poison hotline before the bath), your vet prescribed a medicated shampoo, or your cat can’t groom herself anymore. Older cats, arthritic cats, and overweight cats can have a difficult time cleaning themselves, and might need regular baths or a visit to the vet.

A cat who used to groom themselves normally but suddenly stops and turns greasy, flaky, or matted over a few weeks needs a vet visit to find out why.

When we first got Thelma and Louis they had ringworm, so we had to give them weekly medicated baths. I thought that would help them get used to it, but they never did! The last time we had to give Louis a bath after he got gunk on his fur he was not a happy camper! Which means maybe take the kitten section below with a grain of salt…

If you’re building a grooming kit

If you’d rather have all of that in shopping-list form, this is the short version: one pick per job, nothing fancy. The ear and eye wipes we use are linked up in the eyes section, and everything else is below.

If you have a kitten, start everything now

When Thelma and Louis were little we made a point to try to do things to make them less afraid of things cats can sometimes be afraid of. Hands, feet, baths, toothbrushing, vacuums, being held…you name it. Some worked (Louis loves feet, a little too much), Thelma likes being held and also wants us to pet her while she’s eating. But other things didn’t (like brushing of any kind). While it’s great to do this no matter the outcome when they’re younger and older, your cat will very likely still have very strong opinions about what they like and don’t like. And that’s ok. It’s just our job to work around it!