We're going to try a sanitary groom on our cats backside

Texaskitty

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We have a long haired cat, Aria, who gets poop stuck to her butt pretty often. Her hair is sooo long on her butt and back legs, poop gets stuck on there or just clods of cat litter. The poop balls are the worst. We had a small pair of safety scissors (rounded tips) that were kinda old and dull and my husband would hold her and I would snip off just the poop, which worked ok, but the scissors weren't great. We just cut the clods off but the rest of the long hair was still there. This time we're going to try to trim the whole area with much better scissors. We ordered good safety scissors. We could take her to a vet or somewhere, but I'm afraid they would shave her or nick or or something, we'd rather do it ourselves so the hair is the length we want. Has anyone had experience doing this?
 

fionasmom

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I had a very heavy diabetic cat, Stella, who suffered from some mild neuropathy as time went on which complicated her cleaniness. She also could not use a litter box as she could not step up at all and so used puppy pads. I always let the vet do the sanitary trim on her BUT you should tell your vet that they cannot get too close to her skin as she is sensitive about that (even if she is not). I have had sanitary trims from the vet be way too close and cause discomfort but when I spoke up it seemed that they did exercise caution.

I do trim my dog's rear all the time (GSD) but he is very calm and just lays there. In fact, he is the one who had the way too close sanitary trim and it did irritate his skin. With safety scissors, despite not having a point per se, be careful not to cut too close with the blade as you could still pinch something. You can probably handle this just fine yourselves.
 
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Texaskitty

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Hi Fionasmom, thank you for your reply. Aria is only 1-1/2 years old but her butt hair is so long I don't think she can deal with it. She probably tries to clean off a poop ball but it's stuck and she gives up and goes "I guess I'll go around with a poop ball." Her hair's about 3 inches long. We figure to trim it to about an inch long, if we can get it a little shorter that would get good without any risk to her.
 

fionasmom

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I agree that allowing her to stay dirty is creating another problem for her. Trimming a couple of inches is a good start.
 
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