I just saw the video of the cat now learning to live with 3 legs and he was very fluffy.
I’ve had a cat when I was young and I’ve know lots of people with cats, but it just occured to me, I have never known anyone with a long haired cat. Mine was a tuxedo cat and the rest of the cats I’ve known or seen have been short hair, for lack of a better word, “alley cats.”
But they all were short haired.
So to long haired cat owners, how much harder is it to take care of them. I assume you have to brush them quite often, (I’d brush my cat once a day) and I also assume the fur balls is much more of an issue.
If they go outside, do they get more sticky plants and such in them and/or matted fur
A healthy weight, well trained (by her mama, not by people) long haired cat can mostly take care of her own coat. The most you have to watch out for is some feces caught near her butt, which is rather gross, but cleans off with a warm wet washcloth. The occasional matting may happen if she’s sick or outdoors, and that needs to be groomed by people, but I had one long haired who literally needed some attention about 3 times a year, and that was it.
However, a kitten taken from her mother before bathing lessons are complete, an overweight cat who really can’t reach her rump, or an older/weaker/lazier cat may indeed need frequent brushing. Like, twice a day frequent, sometimes.
Since you don’t really know which cat you’ll end up with, I recommend getting all kittens - regardless of coat length - used to the brush early and often. If they’re acclimated to the brush, your life will be much easier!
I have one long-haired cat and she hates to be brushed. The short-hairs love it but I usually have to sneak up on her and try to get a few brushings in before she runs away. A few years ago I just took her with me to work (vet. clinic) and knocked her out for a full clip, mostly because her booty gets disgusting and she’s fat so can’t clean herself well. Her fur has stayed pretty mat free since then and I did the full clip once again recently when she needed another sanitary clip.
I have one of those brushes that has two heads, plus two smaller combs that snap out separately from the sides. Well, my gf’s cat hates being combed, but he also hates the brush, so I snap out one of those and have him chew on the main brush while combing him with the smaller ones. I’m working up the nerve/effort to break out some clippers.
Of course the DSHs don’t really mind being combed, but they don’t need to be. At least it’s only the DLH which enjoys hairball remedy. I’ve had cats my whole life, but hadn’t seen a hairball until recently. I thought it was crap.
Our Turkish Angora mix is quite tolerant of brushing, even with the metal-toothed currycomb. Her coat is very fine and she’s usually happy to be brushed, although she won’t roll over in her basket until damn good and ready.
Now and then she gets mats, but they snip or even pull out pretty easily. She’s an obsessive self-groomer and gets hairballs now and then, but no big fuss, just huk, huk and they’re up, with very little spit-up to clean.
We have 3 cats - 2 typical DSH, and one that the vet says is technically a shorthair, but you wouldn’t know it to look. I think a close ancestor was from the long-haired variety.
This furball has very fine fly-away hair, and a tail that always seems to be waving in your face if she’s anywhere close to it. Fortunately, she likes being brushed. I usually use a furminator brush to get the worst of the hair off her, then a wire-bristled curry brush to pick up the extra. The only problem is that she wants to walk around and move when being brushed, so I might get a stroke or 2 on one side before she brings the other side to bear. I learned to hold her still while brushing, and do it quickly. Other than that, it’s not hard. The furminator brush gets a lot of fur in a hurry.
My Maine Coon will only tolerate brushing if you accompany it with lots of kitty treats. Basically we do it once a week anyway. My husband grabs her and I comb her as gently as can with the occasional mat that just has be cut out. You have to or she gets all filled with mats. When we were away for a few weeks last summer and she was being watched by someone else she wouldn’t let them come near her.
The vet wound up having to shave most of her fur to get rid of the resulting knots.
Our cats allow us to: brush their teeth, trim their claws, brush their fur, trim their coats, bathe them … all with no biting or scratching, and (mostly) a minimum of yowling or complaints.
I have been told other cats may not be so accommodating.
Oh yeah, the claws. Only my cousin (who rescued our kitty) is allowed at the claws. I got as far as one paw once - after that it was wriggle-worm time.
2 cats here. One is a big long hair and the other average sized short hair. The first one grooms almost excessively and like the Warren Zevon song ‘her hair is perfect.’ She still loves being brushed. Once I wanted to see how long I could go before she got tired of it - never happened. I ended up brushing a bald spot in her fur.
The other one doesn’t understand the concept of “self-cleaning”. His hair gets so matted there isn’t anything I can do except start snipping. I’ve tried every kind of brush - serrated, the kind with long 2" teeth that are razor sharp on one edge, the kind with razor in between the teeth, etc. And I hate to brush him because the fur is so fine it creates a mini fur storm and I’m eating fur for the next hour.
We have both a long-haired and a short-haired cat. Mostly, what would happen with the long-haired one is that he would clean himself, we would comb him occasionally (maybe once a week or so), and he’d be silky and fluffy as can be. Now that he’s getting old, though, he can’t groom himself as much as he used to, so he’s getting matted. My mom ends up cutting the mats out every so often.
Our short-haired cat actually has coarser fur than the long-haired one does, and she also sheds more. She also HATES to be combed, and her fur is pretty short anyway, so we don’t even bother.
Depends partly on the characteristics of the fur. Some longhairs (Himalayans particularly) have smooth, glassy hairs that don’t tangle much, if at all. Other kinds of longhairs have hairs that stick together, tangle and mat very quickly (I have never owned a Persian, but I have heard that their fur is like that).
I have a 3 year old Maine coon cat and he needs to be brushed daily. Plus the shedding is insane. Fur balls blow through my apartment like tumbleweeds. Matting can be a huge problem if you don’t keep up on brushing. My boy loves brush time and at the end I let him attack the brush like a dead mouse. Oddly enough, he doesn’t really have hairball problems.
One of my former cats was a Maine Coon. Normally, he was the sweetest, most laid-back cat I’ve ever had. But every time I groomed him, he’d turn into a monster of fangs and claws. And he growled at me until the grooming was over. He got mats that seemed to appear overnight, plus hairballs that caused him to puke up his food.
One of my current cats is part Maine coon, and the only part of her that has really long hair is her tail. I tried brushing it once, and she made it very clear to me that she’d rather take care of it herself.
