My cat is badly matted.

Matting starts under the top layer of the coat, against the skin, where an owner cannot see it. Dead undercoat is held in place by the grease at the base of the coat, more collects behind it, and what was a soft coat compacts into dense felt. By the time it is obvious from above, the felt is usually sitting flat against the skin.

You find it with your hands rather than your eyes: a comb that stops short, a patch that feels firmer than the fur around it, a cat that objects to being touched somewhere it never used to mind.

Bathing a matted cat makes the matting worse. Water swells and then tightens felted hair, so a mat that was firm comes out of the bath harder and closer to the skin, and a coat that was only starting to compact can set. The bath comes after the mats are gone, not before: on a clear coat it lifts the grease that holds dead undercoat in place.

This is the one piece of home first aid that reliably costs a cat its coat, because it is the sensible thing to try and it is exactly backwards.

No. Cutting mats out with scissors is how a matted cat ends up at the vet. A mat is attached to the skin, and a cat’s skin is thin and loose, so it tents up into the mat as you pull. What looks like a gap between the hair and the skin is usually skin, and scissors go through it without resistance.

Clippers are used instead, and they are used underneath the mat rather than over the top of it, so the blade stays flat against the skin and the mat lifts away in one piece.

A badly matted coat is booked as a single session, which runs up to two hours and starts with a full coat and behavioural assessment. The mats are cleared from underneath with clippers, then the coat is bathed, dried and combed through. How much comes off depends on the coat: a matt spot removal for a patch or two, a comb clip or a lion clip where the matting is through the whole coat.

A hygiene shave and a bolero clip are add-ons rather than the whole groom, and they are decided in the same conversation. Severely matted cats carry an additional charge, and Sandi confirms it with you before she starts.

See a vet before a groomer if the skin under the matting is broken, weeping or hot, if there is a wound, or if you find fleas, ticks or anything moving in the coat. A groomer works on coat and skin, not on injuries or illness, so anything on that list is a vet’s call before it is a groomer’s.

Say so when you book if you have seen any of it. It changes what a session can safely do, and it is better known before the trailer is at your door than after.

A cleared coat stays clear on a schedule, not on good intentions. Matting forms while dead undercoat sits in the coat, so the fix is to keep taking it out: a bath, a proper dry and a full comb out, on a cycle short enough that the coat never compacts. Eight weeks or less is maintenance. Past nine weeks a coat has usually moved far enough to need restoring again.

Between visits, comb to the skin rather than over the top of the coat. A comb that stops short has found the beginning of a mat, and that is the moment it is easiest to clear.