Cat grooming - yes, it's a thing!

Lowcountry Feline Spa offers purrrfect mobile spruce ups for feline friends

Whitney Bullock and Michelle Goettsch pulled up to a suburban Daniel Island home with a trailer attached to their car. Inside the rolling metal container was a sink for bathing cats, a table, and a cabinet with an array of hair trimming tools. Their Lowcountry Feline Spa is essentially a grooming salon on wheels, ready to roll to the nearest person with a cat in need of a bath and haircut.

“People say that they love it,” said Bullock. “A lot of people don’t like the hair in their house, it helps with shedding. Hairballs—it eliminates those. People say their cats are happier.”

The mobile bathtub services roughly 30 cats a week, according to Bullock and Goettsch.

“I didn’t think it was going to take off quite so fast,” Bullock commented. “I’ve never started a business before, so I didn’t know what to expect.”

The business started two years ago and services areas in Daniel Island, downtown Charleston, Summerville, and Mt. Pleasant.

As Goettsch described it, driving and traffic are the most difficult parts of the job— dealing with cats and their supposed hatred of water is the easy part.

“We actually had planned on having to sedate a lot of cats, but we found that in here [trailer] they don’t have to be sedated,” Bullock added.

Before starting the Lowcountry Feline Spa, both of the business owners worked as vet techs, or “animal nurses,” said Goettsch.

Back in those days, they would “assist in surgery, do anesthesia, put in catheters, draw blood, run lab work, take x-rays,” Goettsch continued. “Pretty much everything a human nurse does.”

Occasionally, their history in the veterinary practice will assist in finding something wrong with a pet before the owner knows.

“We can find a lot of masses that people don’t notice because it’s under the fur,” claimed Goettsch. “We had one cat we did that had a horrible mouth tumor the owner didn’t know about. You never know what you’re going to find.”

The two cat ladies took several pounds of hair off of a feline friend named Charlotte while answering questions from The Daniel Island News. The cat fought and screeched at times, but was relatively docile for the majority of the hour-long lion cut it received. Bullock and Goettsch claim that it’s pretty normal.

“I think they [pet owners] just picture us getting attacked, they think cats don’t like water, which they don’t necessarily,” said Bullock. “They don’t go swimming like dogs, but if you’re calm, they’re usually calm.”

After Goettsch shaved the coat off of the cat’s body, Bullock gave Charlotte a quick bath. Both of the vet techs dried her off with a towel and a blow dryer.

By the end of the trim, Charlotte resembled a diminutive lion. Her long fur was shaved off her body and legs, leaving hair on her face, neck, paws, and a tuft on the tip of her tail.

Charlotte’s owner, Jennifer Johnston, said that her cat will probably be a return customer— but, they might keep her hair a little longer.

“It wasn’t until the spring that we started noticing she was shedding a lot and it was like tufts of hair were flying off her body when she would run around the house,” she recalled. “There were these little fur tumbleweeds all over our hardwood floors.”

Johnston stated that her family would try to groom her, but didn’t feel confident enough to fully preen the cat.

The pet owner said that her cat seems like she’s enjoying the shorter hair.

When asked for a comment, Charlotte stared blankly, clearly not amused with our attempt at humor. We’re ashamed of ourselves, too, Charlotte.

Grooming is an important part of maintenance for a cat, and one that an owner can participate in regularly.

According to Dr. Robin Parrott of the Daniel Island Animal Hospital and American Association of Feline Practitioners, cats are typically great at self-grooming, but illness, age, and obesity may cause appropriate grooming behaviors to diminish. Cutting a cat’s fur is warranted if mats form, which can come from poor self-grooming habits.

“We recommend brushing all cats— long or shorthair— once a week,” said Parrott.

“Baths aren’t necessarily a required part of feline care but certainly are justifiable to help remove excess dirt and dandruff,” Parrott explained. “Some cat owners choose to use a dry shampoo.”

Daniel Island Publishing

225 Seven Farms Drive
Unit 108
Daniel Island, SC 29492 

Office Number: 843-856-1999
Fax Number: 843-856-8555

 

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