FURminator Long Hair DeShedding Tool for Large Cats

I have a large, long haired monster cat with Maine Coon origins, he had developed massive knotted mats of fur that I simply could not remove with any of my other grooming tools, I had been warned that shaving was the most likely solution. Well, I wasn't happy with that so I bought the FURMINATOR and I am so glad that I did. It removes so much fur in one swipe that you will be wondering if your cat will end up bald but this is all the loose fur that they leave all over your bed, clothes, carpet or wherever else they sleep. The one issue that I wasn't entirely happy with was the static that was produced, after 3 swipes I had to dump the accumulated fur or it started sticking to the brush and then to me, I ended up covered in cat fur but I really didn't mind this much since I was on a mission to remove my cat's matted fur without hurting him, he had 6 very bad knotted mats and it took me 4 separate brushing sessions to remove them all (each session lasting between 3 to 7 minutes depending on how hard he tried to escape) so not a great deal of time in total, this is compared to over an hour of trying to detangle his fur with various other grooming tools (specifically designed for this purpose) which just did nothing to help.

My conclusion is that is you live with a cat you really need a FURminator. This review is written about the large cat/long haired version but it works equally well on my smaller, short haired cats so if you have a mixture of large/small/long hair/short haired cats I would recommend this brush to you rather than the smaller original version which will be fine for small cats but not so great on huge ones.

Please do remember though that when trying to remove matted fur you MUST hold and protect the cat's skin while combing to prevent the fur being pulled out in clumps (and possible mutilation of your hands and face by your enraged feline). This may necessitate you having an ally in your de-furring adventure, one to hold the kitty and one to wield the comb.

We have two long-haired cats currently choosing to reside with us and try to regularly use one of the original Furminators on their fur. One cat really enjoys the experience whilst the second will tolerate being furminated for only a short time. I decided to try this updated model to see if it would make grooming our less tolerant cat any easier/more efficient. It has been very successful.

As I found with the original Furminator, a colossal amount of fur is removed with each grooming session and even after a short time I ended up with a mound of fur in the bin and a cat whose coat felt incredibly soft. The only drawback of using this grooming tool is that you will invariably end up wearing much of your cat's previous coat by the time you finish!

I noticed a few changes had been made to this model:

* The handle is more comfortable to hold and it settles more naturally into the hand.

* The weight feels subtly better; this one is heavier than the original (only by 20g or so) but it feels lighter in use.

* The grooming comb is wider, offering a further 2cm of grooming per sweep (so important with a cat that is less tolerant).

* Fur that accumulates in the tool can be ejected easily at the touch of a button; I never had a problem pulling this out manually but I suppose everything helps.

Overall this has proven to be a big step up from the original model to the extent that a cat that hated to be groomed will now tolerate the Furminator being used for some minutes - we stop now before she indicates (with her claws) that she has had enough! The amount of fur removed is no different (to the eye) than the original model achieved so, if your cat will tolerate that version, I probably would not upgrade. If, however, your cat was less than tolerant of the original Furminator, it might be worth trying the new version out for size.

For a long while we've been using the Safari brush. It's the one with the metal tines and we and our cat, Ling, love it. However, when the kids misplaced it, we decided to try something new, in addition to Ling's old favorite.

What I've learned is that each tool has it's purpose, at least for us. As I explained in my Safari brush review, Ling is LARGE cat with a medium thick coat. And now that he is about 12 years-old he needs more help with his grooming, especially during shedding season.

What I found with the FURminator is that I had to stop too frequently to clean the tines. It just wasn't practical to use this deShedding tool on a cat with that much landscape. And the Safari brush worked better-- at that point.

Where the FURminator shined though is when I went over Ling after that first round. Wow! It brought up even more fur. Fur I never even knew was there. And consequently, Ling looks great and is super soft.

THE SKINNY:::
This is a pricey tool, but one I think is totally worth it if you want to get the maximum amount of fur cleanup. Our cat Ling loved being groomed with the Furminator and it found tons more fluff than our regular cat brush.

The only downside was that during the heavy shedding period, we found it inefficient to use.

Pam T~
mom/blogger/cat lover