Cats are pretty good at keeping themselves in good condition. They groom
themselves. They use their rough tongue to clean their coat and get rid of any dead fur but
it is important that your cat gets used to grooming especially if they’re a long-haired
breed because long-haired breeds find it difficult to keep their hair in really good
condition and they are at risk at getting matted and furballed and even a short-haired cat
like Jill, when she gets older and she gets a bit lazier and a bit stiffer, she will struggle to
keep herself in good condition.

So, you need to get them used to it young and the type of brush you’ll want to use
is something like this: it’s a little cat slicker brush and it’s just got some fine… there’s
metal wires there and they just help strip out any dead hair from the coat to leave all the
nice, new, fresh hair in there. So, just gently run that through your cat’s coat and try and
do that on a regular basis and just do a little bit of the time to get used to. Most cats will
actually love it and you can see all that hair is coming off there. And if you’re really
brave, then you can have a comb at the tummy and, you know, most cats will tolerate it
for a little while.

They might think it’s a bit of a game like this and, you know, you are at slight risk
of having a cat pounce on your hand but if you treat it as all good fun and play, it’s also a
great way of just checking your cat over from head-to-toe because you’re going to notice
any lumps, any bumps, any scratches or any crazies that are going on there quite easily by
doing that.

Now, if your cat does do a lot of grooming, if they’re a long-haired breed, they
are also at risk of getting fur balls and everyone knows that when cats get fur balls – and
the classic symptoms are the retching sounds. So, it sounds like they’re really trying to
bring out their intestines. They’re going, “Rrrr!” and retching up. And that’s when they
get a big lump of fur and it’s all stuck together in their stomach.

If this happens, what you need to do is pop down to a vet and get something like
this, which is a 1:56 –based paste. And you apply this, generally, to the cats paws and
they quite like the taste of it. But if you put something a cat doesn’t particularly want to
take and it’s in a paste form and you just wipe it on to their paws, the cats will groom
themselves and they just lick it off their paws so it’s a very good, easy way of getting
something like a 2:15 paste into a cat is just to put it on their paws and they’ll lick it off
like that. And if you do that, groom them regularly; you shouldn’t have any trouble with
fur balls.