Good morning, humans and non-humans.
Do you always have cat hair on your clothes and everywhere in the house?
Brushing a cat’s hair regularly is the best way to reduce the amount of hair flying around
in your house from the source, and it’s also an effective way to minimize hairballs.
If you do it right, not only does it keep their skin and coat healthy, it’s also a
great bonding experience for you and your cat.
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Let’s get it.
Here are the things we need:
A slicker brush, and some treats to get them used to the feeling of being brushed.
I use this slicker brush from PetKit, it has a hair removing button to take the hair off
after brushing.
If you have a long hair cat, you also need a de-shedding brush and a comb.
I will link the items I use in the description.
First, just like all other training guides we have done, we need to familiarize them
with the item, in this case, it’s the hairbrush, to let them know that this thing is not dangerous.
To do this, place the hairbrush at where they usually hang out.
Manju did not like the hairbrush even a little bit at the beginning and he thought it was
a monster.
With us showing him the hairbrush more when he is calm and relaxed, he realized that the
hairbrush was not that bad and slowly adapted to its existence.
Once they are okay with hanging out with the hairbrush around, we are ready for step two.
When they are relaxed and calm, or just hanging out on your lap, we can start to touch their
back with the other hand holding the brush.
If they are in play or fight mode, wait until they quiet down.
So we pet them in the direction their hair grows and occasionally mix in with some brushing.
If they react to the brush, use the other hand to pet them, and give them some treats.
Slowly increasing the amount of brushing versus stroking their hair by hand.
Once they are okay with you brushing their back, do the same thing with other slightly
more sensitive areas, like their chest and legs.
Their belly is the most sensitive area, I would go very slow and see if they would let
me brush their belly.
If they struggle or show any discomfort, stop brushing and reward them with some treats.
Don’t forget to brush their tail and armpits a couple times a well.
The final step is an easy one.
Reward them with treats for cooperating with you for the session.
Throughout the whole process, if they don’t stay for the whole session, that’s okay.
Patience is key here.
Once you have established a positive association for them, they will start to enjoy the brushing
session more.
These 4 steps work for all cats to get them used to the feeling of being brushed regardless
the length of their hair, short haired cats are fine with just the slicker brush brushing
them regularly, however, if you have a long-haired cat, there are a couple extra steps that might
require some commitment.
With a long-haired cat, I usually use a comb first to remove any mats or tangles.
If there are any bad mats or tangles, don’t pull the whole chunk out really hard, instead,
go into the mats and try detangling with hand first, that will reduce the pain they feel
when removing the mats or tangles.
After we are done with combing, I go with the deshedding brush to remove the loose hair
between their skin and their fur surface, or undercoat if your cat has an undercoat.
Again, repeat mixing brushing with hand-stroking their back first to see how they react to
the brush, once they are okay with it move to more sensitive areas.
Because I noticed the deshedding tool will pull out a lot of hair, I would avoid brushing
one area multiple times.
I would go one path once or at most twice.
So one path, once, and the next path, once.
Once you are done with one side, flip them over to do the other side.
After the deshedding tool, I use the slicker brush to get rid of any flying hair on top
of the cat.
Manju is a Ragdoll cat, and he requires regular brushing.
I brush him every day with the slicker brush to remove any hair flying around and do the
whole comb-deshedder-slicker brush three-step thing twice a week to remove hair between
his skin and fur surface.
That’s how we get our cat used to being brushed and our routine brushing a long-haired
cat.
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cat owners like you.
Please also leave a comment if you would like to share your experience brushing your cat’s
hair.
We are Furry Diary, see you in our next video, bye.