On a lighter note…

I had no idea how much maintenance a Persian cat needed until Zach [my husband and the father of my cats] and I moved in together.

When Zach and I moved in together, he moved in to the duplex I was renting and brought Max with him. Max is a classic tabby Persian. He has the sweetest demeanor and we quickly learned how much he loved being around Midnight.

Max, like all Persian cats, has very long, thick hair. Incredibly thick. Persians are known for their long, beautiful manes, and those manes do require quite a bit of regular brushing to keep it from getting knotted or matted.

Zach told me when he adopted him, on his certificate of adoption, it said his name was Phurball Maximus Aurelius. The “Phurball” part of his name could not be anymore accurate. Max would get very matted, very quickly. He is also a cat that hates to be brushed. He will bite at the brush, he will bite and claw at the brusher, and he will run the moment he gets a chance. As this went on, I could tell he was uncomfortable and he was struggling to give himself a proper bath. Our boy was struggling to get clean!

Enter the local mobile cat groomer. She was kind. She knew cats. She knew what she was doing. She was affordable. And she would come to our house to cut our boys hair! No need to put him in a pet taxi and hear him cry the entire car ride!

Our groomer has been doing this for the last several decades and she is good. She can read cats very well and she is also very intuitive when it comes to the grooming process. She knows what to do and what to avoid based on the cats behavior. She has so much experience and I can’t imagine having anyone else handle our kitty as well as she does.

While Max does not enjoy his haircuts, he has learned to tolerate them. To be very clear, he does not like the process and will yowl throughout the whole thing. Because it’s a little stressful, Zach will usually hold Max as the haircut happens and it also helps the process to move along quickly. It’s usually done within 30 minutes!

We get Max’s haircut once or twice a year and we’ve been doing this since 2017. It keeps his mane under control and I think he appreciates the end result. While his fur is beautiful, once it gets to a certain point, it does weigh him down and impacts his grooming and demeanor a bit. Usually once it’s over and he’s calmed down from the excitement of having his hair cut like a lion, he jumps around the house like the most agile cat ever! He seems more playful and he just feels lighter.

Another highlight is once Max gets his haircut, he throws up much fewer hairballs and any skin dander he has is easily brushed away in just a few pets so his skin is healthier too.

If you have a Persian cat that hates brushing and car rides, I would highly recommend you look into finding a local, mobile groomer. It’s worth the money, it’s fast, and depending on how quick your kitties hair will grow, it will last most of a year.

And now, without further ado, I would like to present you a little compilation of some of Max’s past haircuts.

Before:

After: