Cat Grooming

Living on the Northern Beaches, where the sun shines bright and paralysis ticks are rife, we clip many of our feline patients during the warmer months to help them manage the heat and assist their owners in finding paralysis ticks. Clipping older cats can have many additional benefits, such as reducing the amount of fur swallowed, and assisting with grooming when arthritis or an ageing coat may make it more difficult. When we do our lion clips (our standard cat clip) we utilise general anaesthesia with intravenous fluid therapy. We also use Doppler blood pressure monitoring in more fragile or older patients to ensure optimal blood pressures are maintained to protect their invaluable kidneys. It is a common misconception that general anaesthesia poses more risks than sedation, but actually it is the other way around – the depth of sedation required to clip a cat is generally too deep to be safe for the time required. General anaesthesia can be gently titrated to deliver the smallest drug quantity required to keep your cat asleep whilst supplying a high oxygen concentration straight to their lungs.