Yes, that special time of the year is already upon us. Gift giving, chocolate devouring? Puh-lease! The temperature has started spiking up a bit, although not by much. Still though, it has resulted in uncomfortably warm days in our house right now since turning down/off the heater isn’t a good idea. It’s still nippy at night, and since the heater takes hours to warm up the old house it’s not advisable to turn it off. This has resulted in some discomfort for Denali, the resident long-haired kitty. So today Denali got a furcut.

As you can see, she is quite the fluffy ball of fur. She recently tipped the scale at 10.5 lbs, and looking at this picture and the one in the post where she was being naughty, it’s not hard to believe she’s weighing in at the double digits. Just look at that big fluffy tail! I always call her my little gray fox, and really it’s a good thing she’s not black, with her bulk and fur she could easily be mistaken for a skunk.

Per the norm, when I got out the clippers Denali tried to pull a disappearing act on me. I’m not sure why she does this every time, it’s not like she doesn’t like getting her fur cut. When I’m trimming her fur she positively acts as though she’s being brushed, not buzzed. Well, with the exception of her tummy and tail. In her opinion those are no-buzz zones. That doesn’t stop me of course.

I can never bring myself to give her tail much of a trimming though. I just normally go over it with the clippers very lightly so that she gets a slight trim to allow for new fur growth, but that’s about it. Her stomach though, obviously, has to be trimmed otherwise the purpose of the hair cut is pretty much defeated. It’s hard though to hold her still so I can safely trim the fur on her tummy. I can always give her a nice even hair cut on her back and sides, but never her tummy. You can’t really see it, but it came out a a bit jagged in places.

In the picture to your left you can kind of see that her chest and tummy are a bit uneven. I have yet to give her a perfect cut. I just cannot get her to trust me to trim the fur on her tummy and chest. Any suggestions or tips?

I left her fur longer than what I normally do. Right now it’s about the length of a normally medium to short-haired cat. Normally I buzz it pretty close for her since she gets over heated in the summer and runs the risk of heatstroke, but since I actually had to cut her fur earlier than normal (she usually doesn’t get a furcut until late April or early May) I left some length just in case the temperatures drop again though. Poor baby can’t make it through the summer down here, since she’s so active, unless I cut her fur.

A pity I didn’t think to keep the camera on hand after I cut her fur. After I had finished, she responded in her typical fashion: purring, licks, and then running and playing through the house with the energy of a kitten.