If you want your Persian cat to be the best at the show, prepare her to win!
Exhibition grooming is an art that requires not only certain technical skills, but also a sense of beauty. Watch an experienced breeder prepare his cat for a show. Yes, it's a theater! Mastering the art of grooming is not easy, but possible if you want your cat to be the winner.
In the preparation of Persians and exotics of various colors, there are different nuances, but there are also common points.
Preparing the eyes. Many extreme animals have watery eyes. One of the reasons for this is the activity of microorganisms. As a rule, healthy animals do not have lacrimation. But nevertheless, if your pet's eyes are watering, a week before the exhibition, drip the cat's eyes with "chloramphenicol solution" - one drop twice a day. If the discharge is strong, apply tetracycline ophthalmic ointment for 4 days. There are cats who squint their eyes in fear at exhibitions. In this case, prepare Vizin drops. One drop 15-20 minutes before the examination - and your "peach" will look at the world freely. Some breeders, in order to make the eyes spectacularly larger, trim the eyelashes of the animal, but this is a double-edged sword: the eyes will also be open for infections.
Removal of tear stains. Lacrimal smudges and spots on the cheeks and front paws often spoil the appearance of the cat, especially white, cream colors and harlequins. To avoid this, special bleaching agents are used. The best results are obtained when these areas are whitened with special compounds, for example, "Opticgel". Liquid for removing tear stone ". Depending on the degree of soiling, start bleaching 1-2 weeks before the show. Do not use cotton wool to clean your eyes; its fibers irritate the cornea of the eye. It is better to use soft paper napkins. When buying whitening products, be sure to consult your dealer on how to use these products correctly. For example, the Biafar liquid is applied directly to the wool and rubbed in, and 8 in 1 is applied to the fabric and the stain is wiped with it.
Preparing the cat's ears. In addition to cleaning the ear canals and concha, we use some specific techniques. To make the ears appear smaller and the head rounder, you need to remove the brushes. Clamping the tip of the ear between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, trim the brush with the right or cut it with small scissors.
Preparing the cat's fur. It is important that the Persian fur is not only cleanly washed, but also properly prepared for washing. 1-2 weeks before the performance, we begin to remove the skeleton. In some animals, this coarse top coat is twice as long as the undercoat. Sometimes, to remove the skeleton, it is enough to slightly moisten the wool and twitch slightly, and in other cases, trimming is carried out as follows: holding the skin of the cat with one hand, pulling the awn with the other with sharp movements. White animals have a special texture and it can be very difficult to distinguish awn from undercoat. If you are not sure that you can handle it, you can leave everything as it is or resort to a haircut (remove the hairs protruding above the level of the undercoat with scissors). After plucking or trimming, apply a protein spray to the coat.
In dark animals, sometimes white hairs appear on the back, tail and legs, spoiling the quality of the color. Remove them with tweezers. In bicolors, white hairs on the spots of the main color are unacceptable, and the color transitions should be contrasting, not blurred.
Washing the cat. In preparation for the exhibition, this is the most difficult and responsible event. Some owners wash their cats for a week, some on the night before the show, and I bathe my Persians twice: two weeks before the show and on Thursday evening, so that the wool "comes alive" by the Saturday show.
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What shampoo to choose when preparing a Persian cat for an exhibition? The supply market is very large. One piece of advice: don't experiment on the eve of an exhibition - the result can be disastrous. Get a shampoo and try it beforehand.
For even colors, I use tinted shampoos. There are shampoos that add brightness and color to the finger.
I advise you to wash blue and cream cats with white shampoos to give the coat a delicate pearl tone; for tortoiseshells, tabby and bicolors, I recommend shampoos based on seaweed, which give brightness to the color; white Persians and exotics first wash with dishwashing liquid "Bingo", and then with "Nizoral-shampoo" or exhibition shampoo for white color.
