It’s kind of like a rat bastard, only worse. I made an appointment for Marley at The Dog House–the pet grooming business that we’ve been frequenting for the past 10 years. He has a bunch of matted hair on his back that I’m sick of looking at. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have worried about it.
Getting Marley in his crate was interesting enough. He proceeded to growl, hiss, and spit venom until we arrived at The Dog House. The woman there was like, “Is he always like this?” As far as I know, he is. Given this, she didn’t want to take a chance on getting bitten or having the cat injure himself while being groomed. She suggested having the vet slightly sedate him if we decide to try this again. She didn’t think he’d take well to having me stuff a tranquilizer down his throat, hence the vet suggestion. She said that she grooms about 100 cats a year and maybe a half dozen of them need to be sedated before being groomed, so it looks like we’re one of the “lucky” few cat owners out there.