01 — Let’s Say It Plainly
Scruffing a cat to finish a groom is animal abuse.
We know that’s a strong sentence. We’re writing it anyway.
Scruffing — grabbing the loose skin at the back of a cat’s neck and pinning them to the table — is still one of the most common ways cats are handled during grooming, in salons all over the world. It gets passed from groomer to groomer as “control.” It’s even taught in some well-known grooming certification materials as a legitimate way to restrain a cat so you can get the job done.
At XMMO, we don’t scruff cats. Not “only when necessary.” Not “just for the face.” Never.
02 — The Wrong Goal
If the cat leaves afraid of grooming, the groom failed.
A scruffed cat can be held still. The coat can be finished. The owner picks up a tidy cat and goes home happy. On paper, the job is done.
What nobody sees on paper is the lesson the cat just learned: these hands, this table, this place — they hurt me, and I couldn’t get away. Cats remember fear for years. That lesson doesn’t stay in the salon. It comes back in the carrier, in the car, at the door of every groomer that cat will ever see.
- You can only control a cat that way once. The next visit, the cat arrives already braced, already angry, already fighting — because it remembers exactly how last time ended.
- Scruffing doesn’t fix a difficult cat. It creates one. Every forced groom makes the next one harder, and the cat is the one who pays for it.
- “Done” isn’t the measure. The measure is whether the cat can walk back in next time without panic. If it can’t, we didn’t succeed — we just got lucky with the clock.
03 — What Walks Through Our Door
Many of our most frightened cats learned it somewhere else.
A lot of our clients come to us after grooming elsewhere. Some of those cats are hissing before the carrier door is even open. Some go rigid the moment they’re lifted onto the table. They’re not “naughty” or “aggressive.” They’ve already filed grooming under threat — pain, restraint, no way out — and they’re doing the only thing a cat can do about it.
I’ll be honest with you: there is no way for me to fully correct that. We can be slower. We can be gentler. We can give that cat calm visit after calm visit. But I can’t erase a memory I didn’t create, and some cats will carry that first bad experience for the rest of their lives. That’s the part of this job that stays with me.
Why we’re saying this out loud
Because every frightened cat we meet started out as a cat who’d never been groomed. Somewhere along the way, someone decided finishing the appointment mattered more than how the cat would feel about the next one.
04 — What We Do Instead
When a cat says no, we listen.
XMMO grooms under Fear Free practice. The Fear Free pledge Ben signed commits us to never use fear- or force-based tools or techniques, on any cat, for any reason — and scruffing is exactly that. Here’s what we do in its place:
- We read the cat before we touch the cat. Ears, eyes, breathing, posture — we’re watching stress levels from the moment the carrier opens, and adjusting long before a cat has to fight.
- We slow down, pause, or split the groom. Shorter sessions, breaks, or a calmer day. The schedule bends for the cat, not the other way around.
- We respect the cat’s decision. If a cat is genuinely telling us no, we stop. A cat can’t consent in words — fear, freezing and fighting are its only way of saying it. We take that seriously.
- For severe, full-body matting, we refer to a vet-based groomer. When a coat is too far gone to work on safely while the cat is awake, the kindest option is a vet clinic that grooms, where the cat can be sedated under veterinary care and shaved safely — without an hour of restraint and struggle.
Sedation isn’t the easy way out
Some owners worry that sending a cat to a vet for a sedated shave is overkill. Compare it to the alternative: a conscious, terrified cat being held down by the neck while clippers work over painful mats. One of those leaves a memory. The other doesn’t. We know which one we’d choose for our own cats.
05 — To Other Groomers
If you don’t want to take time with cats, this might not be your space.
Cat grooming is not fast work. Cats don’t perform on command, and they don’t forgive being forced. If the appointment book matters more to you than the cat on your table, scruffing will always look like a solution — and you’ll keep making the cats that the rest of us struggle to help.
We’re not saying this to shame anyone who was taught to scruff. Plenty of good groomers learned it because it was presented to them as standard. We’re saying it because standards can change, and they should. It’s also how we teach at XMMO Cat Academy: patience first, technique second, and no scruffing — ever.
We want this to change.
No scruffing. No forced grooms. No cat sent home more scared than it arrived. If your cat has had a rough experience somewhere else, talk to us before you book — we’ll tell you honestly what we can do, and when a vet-based groom is the kinder choice.
Header image: Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, as published by Vet Times — “To scruff or not to scruff – do we handle cats well?”
