Dear Sqrlcub,
I think you are taking the right approach. If you were “not thinking of your pet”, you would not have sought advice from the board.
By the way, food coloring is quite intense, and is what they use in kool aid. It is a stain, and it will stain your fingers too so if you do it wear gloves. There is food color concentrate used for cake and pastry chefs that is sold at stores like “The Rolling Pin” or William’s and Sonoma" It’s a paste. Be sure what ever you use to add some water to it and mix it completely so you don’t get a blotchy job.
One more thing, for any others out there who wish to dye their pet, and you “kitchen cosmetologists”. NO PEROXIDE! The hydrogen peroxide you use as an astringent is not the same as the stuff used on hair. No more than Rubbing Alcohol is like the alcohol in beer!
Hair color that has no bleach uses other chemicals to lighten hair that is just as harsh!
Some use ammonia, some sodium hydroxide, lye (the stuff in Draino) some exothermic chemicals (they get hot!)
I must vehemently disagree. Wanting to dye a cat at all is the wrong approach to begin with. It’s a freakin’ cat. It cannot consent to what you’re doing to it. At the same time, it is a living being, not a toy. Dyeing it for your amusement is foolish and cruel.
Aww lighten up! I bet lots of us have tinted out pussy!( or is it match your snatch I forget)
(oops) that’s Our, not out.
I repeat Lighten up! He’s only going to use a harmless rinse, as far as the cat will know it’s water…thats not cruel. WHAT! you’re afraid the other cat’s will laugh at him?
Thank you blueslady. I will actually have the groomers do it when I get him groomed (trim his nails and bathe him). They said they do it fairly infrequently but get the request everyonce in a while. I will have to talk to them about either food colouring or koolaid but I think they use something that is a bit more mainstream than those. I will have to talk to them again before I do it.
Anyway, I no he can’t consent to being dyed, nor can he consent to a bath, nor can he consent to get fleas, nor can he consent to what I feed him, etc. It really is not a matter of consent here. My cat’s breed is one where they have to be bathed fairly regularly or they start to stink. Putting a rinse on is no worse than the flea shampoo that the vet/groomers use. The vet actually told me the flea shampoo can do more harm than good. Did you know that it could blind them or worse? Wow, I bet you bathe your pets with it when they get fleas. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t. They can’t consent to that type of bath. Anyway, this will just be a slight rinse as he finishes his bath and I will have a professional doing it. :p~
HUGS!
Sqrl
PS. Still waiting for Lexicon to come in and tell me how he shaved and died his cat when going to a sci-fi convention.
You are welcome Sqrl!
I probably made a new enemy of “Geenius”
But some folks are just a little too serious!!!
PS. Still waiting for Lexicon to come in and tell me how he shaved and died his cat when going to a sci-fi convention. I would love to hear that as well!
:eek:
I have better things to do with my time than keep enemies lists.
If I were that cat, on the other hand …
Ah, SqrlCub, you have restored my faith in you as a sensitive and caring person!
Although I think it’s an odd idea, I don’t have an objection to the dye part, as long as you use something safe, like food coloring (or kool-aid, since your vet has confirmed that it is safe). I was concerned with the bleaching part, as any chemical strong enough to bleach the colored hair is likely to be harmful to the cat.
I certainly can’t see where dyeing your cat would be any worse than the bathing, conditioning, trimming, brushing etc. that many show cats go through constantly. (Warning: illegal grooming secret follows.) <As a matter of fact, cat show exhibitors have been known to use wet tea bags to color and cover up undesirable white spots on an otherwise show quality cat.> At one time I had a shelf full of cat shampoos that ‘enhanced’ different coat colors.
If you ever feel like turning your cat a beautiful, rich, dark purple, I can tell you how to do that safely! When I was a kid (long, loooong ago), we had a solid white tomcat (in those days neutering was something done by rich folks) who frequently battled with other feline romeos and returned home bloody but unbowed. At the time, we treated everyone - kids, cattle, dogs, cats, etc. - with a product called Gentian Violet or Blue Lotion. Wonderful stuff - dried up any open wound, sealed it off from infection, seemed to numb any exposed nerve endings, and didn’t sting like iodine. Unfortunately, it also dyed anything it touched a rich, deep purple which was just about permanent on many things, like clothes, skin, and hair.
Of course, the tomcat got liberally splashed with the purple stuff to treat his wounds, and became quite a conversation piece in the neighborhood, along with inspiring incredulous double-takes from visitors. We had the only purple-and-white cat for miles around! (or maybe the only one, period)
Thank you coosa. As I said in an earlier part of this thread, I won’t bleach him out because of both the research I did and from what was said here. I have gotten some good advice from most of the people and I know I won’t do anything that will hurt him now if I decide that he should still be dyed.
What were the other things that you used to patch up the discoloured spots on the show cats? You said teabags were one. I assume they added either a brown or yellow colour. Also, the deep purple colouring was pretty interesting. Do they sell that at Petsmart or some other store like that?
HUGS!
Sqrl
Really? Oh, I’m gonna be sick later!
Pad, I just wanted to take a moment to say that I love your sig.
“For the love of God, Montresor!”
For the record: Sqrl, I’m glad you scrapped the bleach idea, and I’m glad you sought advice on the matter. It’s clear that you love your kitty very much and would never do anything to hurt him.
And I guess you are not the only (adult!) person who has thought of dyeing your pet. I have often idly wondered what Spot would look like if I tinted him blue. He is a Dalmatian/pointer mix–white with tons of black spots–so if I tinted him he would be blue with black spots. I never considered doing it for real…but now I just might. 
Now you’ve got me thinking about my black and white cat … She’s a tuxedo cat – perhaps it’s time to try a different color “shirtfront”?
Of course, my cat would kill me if I tried it, so it’s not really a dilemma Perhaps I’ll try it on on PhotoShop, though.
Catrandom
Breckinshire, Please Don’t drink Rubbing Alcohol that practice is entirely reserved for my ex-husband!
blueslady
Yeah, maybe manic panic, or food coloring. I knew some people who had a white and brown cat, and dyed just the white part of his breast-bone area where he couldn’t groom with his mouth, just in case. He was fine (it was dark tulip manic panic). Don’t bleach the cat, though.
How many people who have kittens (hehhhh. . .) at the idea of dying the cat have declawed or spayed their own cats? The only way the cat I knew suffered was that when he tried to go hunting for little birds, they would notice this flash of pink running around, so he no longer caught much.
So, if you dye your cat, is it going to be a complete dye job, or just, say, burgundy patterns?
Think how neat swirly burgundy patterns would look on a grey cat…
Hi, SqrlCub, sorry to take so long answering you but I did a little research on your behalf.
Unfortunately, with little to show for it. 
All of the ‘hair coloring’ I know of for cats is meant to blend in with natural cat colors, so you wouldn’t find anything ‘different’. They are also very temporary, meant to treat only small areas, and, in the case of the many color-enhancing shampoos, not terribly effective. A wet tea bag might disguise a thumbnail size white spot on a brown tabby, but just give your cat an ugly, dingy color.
I thought that with the current interests in unusual hair colors (green, pink, etc.), that surely you were not the first person to want to dye their pet an unusual color, and that some groomers might be doing this on a regular basis. Maybe someone had figured out that Manic Panic or something was safe to use on pets. But the only references I found were to using food coloring. I did find one groomer that mentioned coloring dogs, but the business was in Sydney, Australia and didn’t mention how they did it!
From what I could find out, your best bets are food coloring, Kool-Aid, and Jello, but there are some drawbacks, especially to Kool-Aid and Jello. I couldn’t really find anything about Jello except that it is similar to using Kool-Aid, but I did find a lot of links to using Kool-Aid. Here’s one: American Kool-Aid Beauty
But, it’s messy, doesn’t last long, and bleeds when it gets wet - which means your cat will probably lick it off in no time, and if he gets his little feet wet you will have a new and interesting pattern on your upholstery. Also, to get a good, deep color it needs to sit on the hair for 24 hours! But you can read about it at the above site and a bunch of others if you feel like searching.
Jello seems to be very similar to Kool-Aid.
I checked on the purple stuff for you, and it is still around and being used. The best place to get it is going to be a pharmacy, although many pharmacies don’t carry it any longer. It is called Gentian Violet and seems to be a very good antifungal agent. Many pediatricians still use it as a treatment for thrush in babies (yeast infection) and it is still used for a lot of other things, including treating blood from donors who may have been exposed to Chaga’s Disease (South America). However, some research several years ago indicated that if you drink about a gallon of it, it may cause you to develop cancer sometime before you die of old age. Seriously, the danger wasn’t considered serious enough to pull the product off the market or prevent pediatricians from using it on babies, but some pharmacies still don’t carry it. If you find some, you may need to tell the pharmacist that you need it for your sister’s baby ;). But it’s non-prescription so there is no problem there, but I don’t think you can get it in a spray - it comes as a liquid in a little bottle. Here is a link to a page with some info about Gentian Violet: WebMD: Gentian Violet
There are a very few people who have a reaction to Gentian Violet - usually skin irritation - so make sure you do a small test patch in an unnoticeable place and wait 24 hours before going any further. Basically, though, it is extremely safe and effective stuff, and I believe lost popularity solely because of the intense purple color it turns anything it touches.
If you decide to use any of these things - food coloring, KA, GV - you should keep strongly in mind that they all pretty much stain anything they come in contact with, including your skin and hair, any fabric, and possibly your tub or sink. Make sure your cat is completely dry before letting him out of the tub! GV dries extremely fast, so it shouldn’t really be a problem, but the other stuff might be. I don’t know how long the other stuff will stay on your skin, but GV lasts at least several days, even with scrubbing at it.
I don’t know if it would be safe to cover your cat’s entire body with the GV at one time - it might seal off pores or something and suffocate him if all of his skin is coated. You might be able to check with your vet about that - GV should be a great treatment for ringworm, if you don’t mind having a purple cat. Maybe you could tell him that a friend’s cat was visiting and turned out to have ringworm, and ask him if a ‘gentian violet rinse’ might prevent your cat from catching it. I had hoped to ask my vet about it today, but we were so busy I didn’t get a chance.
Or you might just be careful, use a small sponge or something to apply the GV, and try to just color the hair and keep it off of the skin - don’t know how well that will work with a CR!
You could also take the suggestion of a couple of other people here and use a q-tip or something to make interesting designs on your cat!
A few things to consider about dyeing your cat with anything that is not proven safe:
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Cats groom themselves constantly and ingest whatever is on their fur. Like many predators, toxins are not eliminated from the body very rapidly, and are instead stored in the liver while the liver attempts to break the toxins down into harmless molecules. So cats are much more sensitive to chemicals and such that many animals, and more likely to ingest dangerous amounts.
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Cats are physiologically much different from people and dogs, so substances that are perfectly safe for you, dogs, and many other animals are dangerous for cats. Even if something says it is ‘all natural’, ‘all vegetable’, etc., that doesn’t mean it is not something that will harm your cat. Be very careful.
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Most human products contain some type of strong chemical that breaks down the outer layer of the hair in order for the coloring to be absorbed. Some of these chemicals may be absorbed through the skin and be dangerous, but on humans you are only exposing a small area - your scalp. However, if you dye your cat, you will be covering the entire skin surface with whatever substance you are using. Not only is this a much greater area (in proportion) from which absorption can occur, and no ‘clear’ skin anywhere to provide proper skin respiration. Again, be very, very careful.
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The pH balance of dog and cat skin is different from humans, so repeated use of human products (such as shampoos) can cause skin problems, such as drying, flaking, itching, bald spots, and even open sores. Just something to keep in mind.
Frankly, SqrlCub, I was surprised that this hadn’t become a major fad, with groomers everywhere dyeing dogs and cats unusual colors. I can see someone who is coloring their hair ‘bright aquamarine’ wanting their dog or cat to match, just for fun. A lot of people have probably done it, but God only knows how many dogs or cats have died or become seriously ill from it.
So there’s a neat money-making, name-making project for you - find an interested vet and interested groomer, and work with them to discover how this might be done safely and easily. Maybe one of the products for temporary hair color already on the market can be determined to be safe if the ingredients are checked by a qualified veterinarian. You might be the founder of a new and exciting fad that will have the ARists up in arms for years.
And I can’t wait to see flourescent pink and neon green dogs walking in the park!