How am I supposed to wash my cats tail?!

[Suchsharpteeth]

Woke up this morning to poo everywhere. My cat is long haired and he has it all stuck in his very bushy tail. I put him straight outside while I cleaned the poo from the house, but when he comes back in I have no idea how I’m going to wash him! He’s a very big cat and not fond of touching or being picked up etc so will fight me if I try. It’s a two man job but my boyfriend is at work until about 7pm tonight. Any tips? 😫

I usually put some of his favourite food or a smear of lick-e-lix in front of him on the countertop and do what I can to his back end while he's distracted. I often just cut the worst of the affected fur away (with care, obvs).

with one of ours, it’s a two person job requiring marigolds for protection. Prepare big bowl of warm water, wrap cats body tightly in a towel and one person holds whilst the other washes the tail in the bowl.

I've washed my fluffy cat by plonking him in the bathroom basin, holding him by the scruff of the neck and washing him with warm water and a flannel. He hates it and I have to move fast once I've caught him, but if it's that or a trail of shite through the house he has to put up with it for a few seconds. If possible I dry him with a warm towel afterwards.

I taught the cat to have baths.

She started with emergency showers - doing the Wall of Death round the outside as I stood in vest and shorts in the middle of the wet room, graduated to her rear end dunked in the sink quickly with the occasional showering off the backside in a shallow bath and then decided actually, a nice, calm, deep and warm bath to just below shoulder level was preferable to either.

I do have a quiet hairdryer, so as long as she's wrapped up for the first bit when she comes out, she seems to find it quite relaxing.

Dcat is, ahem, "feisty".
I ended up buying welding gloves online and a beaten up heavy denim jacket at the thrift that I put on me when I need to tackle situations like yours. I also have a cat harness that she has had to go into on occasion.

To wash poo off the rear end, I get a bowl of warm water ready in the bathroom, with a cloth in it, carry Dcat in (wearing a welding glove on my left hand/arm and rubber glove on my right as I am right handed), make sure the door is shut, and hold her closely against me with her feet in the sink, using my left arm, with my left hand holding her right back leg and her head/ neck in my left elbow. Then I use my right hand (rubber glove here) to fish the cloth out of the bowl of water and wash Dcat.

If I had a spray nozzle that would fit on the bathroom sink taps I'd use that instead of the wet cloth.

I do the best I can, then leave her in the bathtub to finish the job herself.

Oh golly, I feel for you. I’m having flashbacks to when Dcat spread shit around the downstairs and really caked it in to her bum fluff in the process. I was in bed, it was late, DH and ds2 tried but I’m her favorite human so woke up and had to spring in to action.

Dcat is a ragdoll so really fluffy and really docile normally but she got really distressed and scratched and tried to bite me! I think possibly she was more stressed because DH had tried to wipe her first, he’s the bottom of the hierarchy in our house😹

We did our best and left her when she got really stressed, I did my best and then she cleaned herself pretty well in the end. I booked a groomer to shave her before we went away a little while later so ds2 didn’t have a recurrence!

I hope your Dcat calms down and manages to clean themselves.

You’ve had lots of good advice, but I just wanted to add that wipes intended for human use are not suitable for use on cats - their skin has a pH of 6-6.5, compared to the human 5.5; & it is almost paper-thin. The skin irritation may not be visible to the eye (if your cat has sensitive skin it will be) but even if it’s a wipe that doesn’t have ingredients that will cause moggie misery, that pH difference is Not Good.

I hope that you’ve now a clean cat & there haven’t been any further poosplosions 🫤

I would wrap him in a towel after having filled the kitchen sink with warm water, then with cat under one arm sponge the tail with my free hand.

if DH was here, he could hold the towel enclosed cat.