Bert, a technician at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital, bathes Patches, a 13-year-old cat with arthritis, and walks through the essentials: warm water, hypoallergenic shampoo, protecting the face, and how to hold a wet cat. He covers when bathing is actually necessary and daily brushing, weekly ear cleaning, and nail trims.
About 13 years old.
Hi, my name is Bert. I am a technician here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. And this here today with me is Patches. Patches is a resident of our animal hospital. And patches is about 13 years old. He is very mild mannered. He is an older cat, so he has a lot of issues. He has arthritis. And so we're going to be extra careful with him today. He's sweet, but he gets a little feisty when it comes to bath time. So please bear with us. So we are going to just give you a little tidbit about when you feel like you have to bathe your cat. And before we start, we let me just tell you this. You do not have to bathe your cat ever. There are times when one must bathe their cat. If you rescued a cat from outdoors, clearly you want to bathe them. Check for fleas. They might smell like motor oil in the outdoors or if your cat has had an accident. But they're usually really good at cleaning themselves. So today I went ahead and prepared just a little tub, some warm water, not a lot, because as we all know, cats do not like water. And so just enough to wet him a little bit and he just let him get the feel of it. And I like to sometimes just wet them a little bit. Normally, cats do not like their faces wet. So I would suggest you just washing them with a washcloth on the daily. You want to brush your cat hair, you want to clean their ears weekly, trim their nails whenever necessary, and do not be embarrassed if you need two people to do this. I find it helpful when there is another person to help you because like I said, cats do get a little feisty at home. I am going to be using a little bit of eye loop here. That's because we're in the hospital. My secret tidbit is to use Johnson and Johnson's baby shampoo because it's no more tears, it's very gentle on them, and you can just buy it anywhere. So this just prevents the shampoo from falling onto his face and burning, stinging his eyes. So I'm just gonna. Quickly, quickly. I'm going to try to do this as quickly, as painless as possible because again, cats do not like water and it could be very messy. So I would suggest doing this either in your kitchen sink. This way you have more. It's just better convenient for you. So I'm just going to wet him and I use hypoallergenic shampoo. And just always remember, if you must bathe your cat, do not use scented shampoos. Cats in the wild are continuously cleaning themselves and grooming themselves to take all of the scents out because they do not want to be prey for other prey. So water shampoo that is hypoallergenic is good. Patches does have some skin issues and so this shampoo is good. This is good for cats, Some of it is good for horses and for dogs. So there is no scent in this shampoo. They don't really like to smell other than their own scent. And so what I normally do for Patches is I hold his paws down. This way he doesn't have an opportunity to move. If it's a younger cat, they will probably be a little feistier than Patches. But this is all trial and error. And so we are going to be moving really fast. Because cats are scaredy cat. So fun fact, if you and your cat are stranded on a desert island, most likely your cat has a better chance of survival than you. Mainly because they could actually survive on drinking seawater because they are able, their kidneys are able to weed out the salt as opposed to the humans where we cannot. And also cats do sweat from their paws. They do not have sweatpants. And that's why sometimes if you see little paw prints on your kitchen floor or tile, that is them sweating. And another fun fact which is pretty sad for them is the fact that they do not have a sweet tooth. So that's why they are not around you when you were eating cake. They don't really care about that, which I guess is a good thing for their DIY patches. So there you go. I am just going to quickly move them to the clean, just to. Take the residue out and again to clean their face. Try not to let any water onto their face. And that's pretty much. And he's clean. Try to have as many towels on board as possible because he will try to escape as soon as he is done. And with patches, he likes to lay down on a heated pad that I already have waiting for him because he doesn't like all the noise of, of a dryer. So my suggestion is again, you do not have to bathe your cat. What you do have to do is brush your cat because they do get matted. They tend to get matted easily. And what a lot of people don't know is that cats skin is very thin and very sensitive. So once they get a mat, that's actually very painful for them. And as the days go by, the mat gets bigger and if they get wet, it gets bigger and it's quite painful for them. So brush your cat daily, try to clean their ears at least once a week and it's just regular Q tip and they actually do like this, not a big deal and trim their nails whenever needed that I suggest you really want to have another person around? It just makes it easy again depending on your cat and that's it. I hope you found this video helpful to be helpful. If you liked us please hit like please share and please join us. Bye.
