Matted Fur

[Corinne L]

Please tell me how to remove mats from my cat's fur. She has medium-length fur, and it has become matted near her tail. Thanks.

[Tina B and crew]

Corrine...if the mats are that bad I'd recommend taking her to a groomer to have them removed. If you are confident enough you can clip them out yourself, but if they are close to the skin I would not do this.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but is your cat overweight so that she can't groom herself? Usually cats will meticulously groom themselves and mats aren't a problem, but if they become overweight the sometimes have a difficult time grooming themselves. Our Gizmo use to get mats when he was overweight....I gently combed them or clipped them myself. However once he lost the weight he no longer gets them.

[Corinne L]

I am not offended at all! Muffin was overweight, but after several months on Science Diet r/d, she has lost weight. She is not into grooming that much, I think because she is a former stray, and had to worry about survival. Maybe her weight reinforced the bad habit. I never took my cats to the groomer, but will call the vet, and see if he can do it. It's too big for me to handle myself. Thanks for your response.

[davet]

don't just take a pair of scissors and cut, yuou will end up with a neat eliptical incision that will have to be sewn up...put a comb under the mat, enought to cover the entire mat so the scissors will not cut any more than the mat..if you go to a groomer have her clip all thehair off so you can start afresh with combing...but do not cut mats with out the comb..nothinbg vets like to do more than get up late at night to close up those cute little eliptical incisions.

[Corinne L]

Hi. Thanks for the help. I took Muffin to the vet, and he cut out the mats, and didn't charge! Was chicken to do it myself.