The ones I see do- Here’s why…
Let’s travel back in time together… the year is 1985. Magnum PI is on the television, and your parents have two cats that live outside and have never been to the vet. Amazingly they live to be 17 years old and never have a single problem. That’s how you remember it anyway, but was that really the case? Probably not. The truth is those low maintenance cats of yours probably suffered from a few rotten and painful teeth that needed to be extracted, a plethora of skin allergies from the pollen and mosquito bites, and I’m just going to go ahead and call it now- they probably needed a good bath and comb-out like nobody’s business.
Thing is- nobody cared about cats back then. Seriously. Cats were tossed outside, usually unvaccinated and definitely without flea and heart-worm control. Most people just had “street cats,” and their coats if not always short, were for the most-part manageable. In the winter-time they might have cozied up in the garage for warmth, lounging around in the spilled oil puddles under the family station wagon. No one really cared or noticed if their fur was stained or matted, as long as they were still eating and patrolling the yard as usual.
Now let’s fast-forward. There’s a Magnum PI reboot on the TV (with a much lesser actor), and you’re lounging in bed with the two Part Maine-Coons you rescued from the local shelter. They are your BABIES. They sleep with you at night (so they better not have dingleberries or oil stains on their coats) and you take them for walks with a leash and harness. Their coats are MAGNIFICENT… they’ve been bred especially for that coat- and that comes with consequences. In fact, a lot of people you know also have pure-bred cats or designer “mixes” that have amazing, albeit difficult to manage coats. Do these cats need baths? Abso-freakin-lutely. Left unchecked, these cats end up completely pelted not unlike a sheep that’s left un-sheared. Are the coats getting longer and more luxurious by the day? They are. Consumers, and therefore breeders, have decided they can’t get enough of these types of cats, and every year the Maine Coons get larger and the Persians get more smush-faced, and the Ragdolls get more “Ragdolly,” whatever that means.
This doesn’t mean that every cat that I groom is purebred. Some people prefer their short-haired cats to be shinier and shed less, or they prefer me to remove excess fur rather than step on a wet ball of that vomited fur. There are still plenty of ‘street cats’ like the ones you grew up with… only now people are obsessed with their cats. Nobody is sleeping in the garage (under the Tesla) anymore. So to answer the question: “Do cats need baths?” Yes! Every breed of cat (even mixed breeds) can benefit from a bath. The real question is- are your opinions stuck in 1985?
~Whitney
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The Charleston Cat Groomer 