About four years ago, a feral cat abandoned three of her kittens in our backyard. They weren’t even a week old. We brought them inside and bottle-fed them. Had to teach them to eat and bathe and all the things mother cats do. Two of them, we found homes for. The third, we kept. Her name is Arya.

She is very, very fluffy.

The last few summers, we’ve been able to brush her without too much trouble. When she did get a few inevitable mats, we were able to cut them off with scissors. This year, however, she sees a brush and her first instinct is DO NOT WANT. She gets bitey, she gets pointy, she tries to eat the brush. Because OH GOD MOM ANYTHING BUT THE BRUSHING OMG.

Which meant, of course, that as the weather got warmer and she started to shed, she couldn’t groom herself well enough to keep up with the long fur, and the mats began to form. It was no longer something Greg and I could handle by sneaking up on her mid-nap and snipping one or two off before she woke up.

We found out that our vet’s sister hospital does grooming, and so, this morning I loaded a very unhappy cat into the carrier and took her there.

This is what she looked like before:

The mats were close enough to the skin that they had to shave her. Now, she wasn’t completely lumpy, but there was no way a nice, relaxing bath followed up by a few passes of a detangling comb was going to do it. Not that I think any bath Arya could be part of would ever be considered “relaxing.”

They gave her a lion cut, so-called because they leave her head and paws and tail alone. She is not entirely happy with me right now, although she’s let me pick her up once or twice. Pixel, our eldest cat, followed her around for a little while, doing the kitty equivalent of WTF? Now he’s sleeping on the bed. Arya’s off sulking.

The after photo:

Hopefully she’ll be more amenable to brushing as her fur grows back in so we don’t have to go through this torment next summer. We did discover that she’s not quite as pudgy as we thought. A lot of it really was just how fluffy she is - though she has a bit of a belly right near her back legs. Still, we thought she was more round than she actually is.

And yes, it’s okay to laugh. I am well aware of how silly she looks right now.

Tags: cats