Well, I am going to get on my high horse and criticised this video. Perhaps I am wasting my time criticising the video because I should be criticising the fact that we have a Persian cat at a commercial grooming parlour. Persian cats have been bred to have very long fur which the cat themselves is unable to groomed properly. Therefore, humans have to do it for the cat. And because of that the owner takes them to the grooming parlour where they put this ghastly headband around the cat’s head to stop them biting the groomer. The whole process starts with creating a cat with fur that is too long for the cat to maintain.
And I just don’t trust grooming parlours. They are generally unregulated. I would be surprised if there is any country where commercial pet groomers are regulated by the local authorities. That doesn’t mean that they’re no good it just means that nobody is watching them. And there have been some terrible accidents at grooming parlours in America for instance.
I think a cat or dog owner who has their companion animal groomed commercially should be present when they do the grooming. But they go away and leave them there for several hours or half a day. They presume that everything is going on just fine. But is it? What is the cat or dog going through? Are they safe? Are they stressed? Are they going to be in pain?
This looks uncomfortable to the cat. I think it’s unfair that we put a cat through this. In fact, it is doubly unfair because this is a flat-based Persian and we know they have problems breathing and tear duct overflow and a predisposition to polycystic kidney disease et cetera.
There are a lot of health issues with respect of this video and it is indicative, I would say, of a rather poor relationship with the Persian cat and humankind. We should not have created a cat with such an abnormally flat face which distorts the internal anatomy. People should seriously be reevaluating whether the cat associations should allow this sort of cat to be bred because it goes against the basic ethos of the cat associations which is to only create cats which are healthy.
The Persian cat can be a pretty placid cat (but predisposed to anxiety) as you can see in the video but my bet is that they were stressed during this. And we don’t know how the grooming session went. We don’t know how a cat feels when they are being handled like this with their fur being combed and brushed vigorously. Often when fur is matted and they go to a grooming parlour to have the matts removed the cat is likely to feel pain and discomfort.
And we don’t know how good or bad the commercial groomers are. Are they going to be sensitive towards the cat? Or are they going to pull and push the cat causing discomfort and stress. The whole thing is unnecessary if the cat did not have this type of fur. You don’t see single-coated regular domestic cats go through this kind of stressful process.
Infographic on flat-faced Persian health as per Dr Fogle DVM
