I have this cat. I got her about 6 months ago and she’s very sweet and super-friendly, but she’s got a problem: stinky poo butt. She’s got fluffy medium-long black fur and she doesn’t clean her bits too well and often is walking around with poo attached to her butt-region fur. She doesn’t like to be picked up (REALLY doesn’t like it) or be restrained in any manner so it’s difficult to get in there and clean her up. Picking her up results in a couple seconds of “what’s happening here?” confusion, then frantic squirming and clawing until she’s free.
What I want to do is just cut the fur off of her nether region but I can’t get her to hold still long enough to cut it off or even just pull off the attached poo.
Grab them by the scruff of the neck and lift. Just like a mother cat does to her kittens. Works with adult cats as well. They will hang there and not fight…at least it’s worked with me on about 10 different cats.
It’s been mentioned before but again for emphasis; squirmy cat + scissors = lacerated cat that you have to take to the vet for sutures. Just premptively take the cat to the vet or groomer for a sanitary clip. They are better at holding cats and have the proper equipment for clipping. If all they do is shave the ano-genital area it shouldn’t cost much.
Yeah, if you wanna skip the groomer and do it yourself, you’re going to need:
a second pair of hands. One person concentrates on nothing but restraining the cat, one person concentrates on nothing but removing fur as swiftly and bloodlessly as possible.
clippers with a guard. Please, don’t use scissors. Shoot, you can buy an inexpensive bikini-area trimmer from Gilette at any drugstore, and have that be exclusively for the cat.
The “roll e’m up in a towel” idea is a common one. But for our cat, I skip the owel and just sort of sit on him. Stand over him, feet on either side of his body, then kneel down and sit (so the backs of my thighs are on my heels and my shins are on the floor.) This way, my actual body weight is off the cat, but I’ve created a sort of restrained area. Also, the cat’s feet never leave the ground with this method - some cats only panic when they don’t have four on the floor, and it sounds like yours is the same way.
This method works because mine is a big cat, though. If you’re got one of those skinny little cats, you might have more luck with the towel.
For just pulling off some dingleberries, swiftly kneeling down and tucking the cat under one arm (so paws don’t leave the floor and they don’t have the panic of being picked up) and then grabbing at what you can see with a wet wipe in the other hand, i.e. spot treatment, can also help out.
No, she’s very slim and at least normally flexible. Just lazy or apathetic I guess.
She’s allergic to wheat and has very loose, extremely smelly poo so she gets special food but she prefers the other cats food, who also gets special food because he has the opposite problem. We feed them separately but she has crafty and devious ways of getting into his food.
I have a problem cat also. She does NOT like being picked up or restrained in any way, shape or form. I’ve used the ‘towel method’, it was a wreck. So, being female, I asked the Vet staff how they immobilize a cat safely.
This method requires two people. One in charge of restraint and the other to do the ‘dirty deed’. The ‘restrainer’ grabs onto the scruff of the neck and presses the front of the cat down on a slippery surface. Once the cat is unable to move anywhere in the front, place your second hand over the hips, trapping the hind feet underneath the cat. When you have complete control over the cats feet by holding her/him down on the ‘table’, the second person can now safely take care of whatever mess the cat has.
After you have finished dealing with the cat’s problem, place the cat on the floor and let go QUICK because you will have a very angry cat.
This is how we did it when I worked at a Vet’s office. If you take a hand full of scruff fur and knead it gently most cats would (it’s been a while) like it so much they wouldn’t make too much of a fuss, even for shots. If they really want to make trouble you just press down as Oldrndt says and they have nowhere to go.
