Dearest Sponsors,

As many humans seemed to struggle with their inability to get a haircut for many months, our dear Bacon has been quite happy to ignore that issue. Bacon isn’t the best cat in regards to grooming, I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to our long-term sponsors! Slowly all those mats started to form and grow in size.

It’s a difficult situation as Bacon detests any attempts at brushing/combing. However, the larger the mats get, the more likely they are to pull on his skin and agitate him. Enough was enough and it was time for Bacon to get a haircut. In his case, he would be shaved (as much as we could quickly get done). It’s certainly one way to deal with “quarantine hair.”

Despite what Bacon would tell you, it wasn’t all that bad. There was screaming, some wiggling, and plenty of attempts to bite through 2 layers of towels. While the act of shaving Bacon wasn’t terrible, the end result is a bit rough—I’m not going to lie there. It seemed to be going quite well… until he was released from the towels. You can see what I mean by “rough” in the photos. At that point, our hair trimmers had died (yes, Bacon’s matted was so bad it drained the fresh battery!), Bacon was very upset at us, and we had already evacuated the room to avoid being attacked.

Bacon looks a bit silly right now, but the mess that was causing his agitation has been removed!

In other Bacon news—something much more simple—he received a delivery of two new canvas crates! These are the only crates we use with Bacon due to them being soft-sided they help limit injuries that can occur when Bacon has a seizure in his crate. His two new digs arrived and he’s already enjoying them. We are able to switch the crates out daily to make sure they get a proper cleaning. It’s unclear who was peeing on the old crate (either Bacon inside or Fenek outside), but oh boy, the urine smell was pretty bad. We didn’t have a lot of options with cleaning the one crate.  Leaving him in the room during cleaning leads to overstimulation and putting him in a carrier for an extended period of time isn’t safe if he has a seizure. No longer are we greeted with the smell of urine as we walk in the room!

That about wraps things up, I hope you enjoy the funny photos of Bacon’s new haircut. It’s certainly a “look!” I made sure to include a before picture as well so you can get an idea of the mats (and general mess) we had to shave off!

Your correspondent,
Rebecca