Bathe my cat at home – Tips and products

When you think about bathing your cat at home for the first time, the question arises: Do cats bathe? And here comes the false belief that you should never bathe a cat, something totally false. The cats yes you can bathe, but that they do not like, is another story. Although it is true that if a cat is home and has never had any “accident” playing with mud, oil or any other product that seriously dirty his coat, with his tongue, the cat can live perfectly without needing a bath.

But cats are playful and we can find ourselves in the situation where our cat suddenly appears with big dirt stains on his body, something that he just can not clean and that’s when he will need our help. Cats like dogs should not bathe before the 3 months of age, if we bathe them at this early age we can endanger their health since their defenses are not yet fully developed.

Next, in this article we will give you some guidelines and advice on how to bathe your cat at home:

Tips before starting the bath

1. Trim your cat’s nails. To minimize the damage that our cat can cause in a moment of fear or stress, it is advisable to trim your nails. If you have never done it, it is preferable that they be cut by a professional, since inexperience can cause us to cause damage to our feline, even causing it to bleed.

Brush your hair. The fur of our feline can suffer from knots, it will always be easier to untangle said knots with dry hair, so we will avoid jerking during the bath and we will make the bath experience as relaxing as possible. Be especially careful behind the ears and neck, are usually the most prone to knots in the fur.

Everything ready and by hand. During the bath we should not leave our cat alone in the bathtub for a single moment, it is very likely that when he sees himself he will only be scared and able to escape, so before starting we should make sure we have everything within our reach: shampoo, towels, toys, treats, brush, dryer.

Warning: The Shampoo should be specific for cats, it would be totally harmful to use our or our dog’s shampoo.

Bathtub or container already with water. The sound of water falling through a tap can scare our cat and stress it, that is why before bringing our cat to the bathroom area, we must have the bath with the water ready to start.

The water must be warm, not too deep, that our cat can stand or sit and the water does not come close to the neck, otherwise, it would be frightened.

At the bottom of the bathtub we will have to put a non-slip carpet and on top of it it is advisable to put some small towel where the legs of our cat will go, in case at some point our cat has a little scare and takes out his nails, that he can nail them in something and relax again.

Some toy in the water it will help us that our cat associates the bath time with a game and we will be able to bathe it quickly and easily.

Finally, relax!. Now you have everything ready, everything by hand and all insured, in a room where calm and harmony reigns, it is only necessary to go for the kitten to start the bath. But if to go for it, the cat notices that you are tense, scared and afraid, it will not be of any use to have the most relaxed and prepared room in the world, since your cat will notice that tension in you and will catch it.

So, take a deep breath, relax and happily go for it, just as if you were playing, he will notice that positive and joyful energy in you and will go happily to take his bath.

Bathing the cat step by step and some tips

1. Entrance of the cat to the bathtub. You better know that no one knows your cat, so you will know with what fun tricks you can get him into the water (toys, sweets, some game, etc.) try and try to get your kitten to naturally enter the water.

If you do not achieve this naturalness, you can take it and make it enter little by little, without pressure, without obligation, without fear.

A trick to be able to catch a cat in a relaxed way is to catch the skin that is in the neck, called the neck. When caught in this area, the kitten will be easily moved to where we need.

Wet the cat very slowly. Once inside the water we will begin to wet it little by little, without hurry. If the cat is scared, it does not matter, we will let you relax as long as you need. It is preferable not to bathe this first time but have had that first contact, to feel obligated and scared and we can never return to bathe.

If everything goes correctly, we continue with the bathroom. We should never wet above his neck, the head should never be introduced under water, it would cause too much terror.

So if we already have the body well wet, we will take the shampoo for cats and with gentle massages we will wash our kitten in the direction of hair growth. Once everything is well soaped, we will take the warm water very gently and rinse with calm and patience our cat, without leaving any trace of shampoo.

Take special care not to get shampoo or eyes, ears, nose or mouth, could cause an infection.

Now we have his little face, since we have not wet it during the bath, but do not worry, you can wash your face with a wet cloth, it’s that easy, our feline companion will not oppose these caresses of a soft and damp cloth his face.

After bath,

1. Drying with towel. Take the towel and wring all the water you can from your hair, gently with movements similar to the caresses that we normally give.

If your cat is short-haired and is in an area where there is no cold current, at this point, you can finish drying only.

Drying with dryer. But if your coat is long or semi long and the dryer does not scare you, we will take it and with soft and warm air we will begin to dry your hair with the help of a brush while combing it in favor of the direction of the hair’s birth.

On the contrary, if you do not accept the dryer, we should continue drying with a towel as much as possible.

Other Recommendations

• Alternative to the bathroom. If our cat flatly refuses to be bathed and there is no way to convince him, there are alternative ways to clean a cat like using dry shampoo that can be applied with a cloth so we can wash our cat.

Frequency of bathrooms. We can bathe our feline whenever we want but not do it more than twice a month.

Routine from small. If you have your kitten since he was a child, even if he does not need it because it is very clean, you can get used to it from the bathroom, it is easier to teach a young kitten not to be afraid of bathing than to an older cat.

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