What are humans getting up to? First we breed a cat with a very flat face which is completely unnatural and which causes known health problems and then we have to shave all the fur off this poor cat’s body except for his face which leaves him looking extremely weird. I’m not sure that I have seen a more weird looking cat. I do see the amusing side though.
It’s a photograph which I had to publish on this website because you don’t often see photographs like this of a domestic cat. It happened in Taiwan. The cat’s name is Jin Jin. The owner, Qian, left her cat with a friend and asked her to take him to the groomers. The instructions got lost in translation only there was no translation. How cat groomers decided to shave a cat like this is beyond me. This is not a lion cut which is the classic cut given to Persian cats. This is a unique hair cut and like the Qian I am baffled as to what happened.
The idea is to help keep Jin Jin cool in the hot weather and to prevent his coat matting. As usual, there has been a silver lining and a happy spin-off certainly for the humans because as you can imagine how the photographs of Jin Jin have gone viral on social media including Facebook.
In China, if you clip your cat or dog it is the sign of good ownership. I had some friends in Malaysia (I spent a couple of weeks in Kuantan, Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru and Singapore many years ago) who rescued Persian cats and the reason for clipping the fur in hot weather was because parasites can hide under long fur. Parasites in those climates are not just ordinary fleas, but are also things that burrow into the flesh or lay eggs under the skin.
In this cat’s case, it went to a groomer in a different town and she misunderstood the instructions. That may sound odd, but China is a land of dialects and different languages which are mutually incomprehensible. If someone took their cat to a groomer in London or the West Country and gave instructions in Geordie dialect you might see similar mistakes on the part of the groomer.