NCGIA National Cat Groomers

Mobile Cat Grooming

Below is an article sent to us by Tiffany Lis of Sophisticats Exclusive Feline Mobile Grooming in CA.  We published the article in our recent eNewsletter “Purrfect Pointers” which is free to anyone who wishes to subscribe. (Check out the NCGIA website to subscribe!)

I am proud of Tiffany!  Cat grooming school presented some serious challenges to this new groomer.  But she pulled through and did so with flying colors! And now to see how well she is doing with her new business venture……..truly amazing!

“It was the summer of 2010, and I had just made a momentous decision: I was going to cat grooming school. “You’re going to do what?!” my friends and family sputtered. Ahh…but not just any cat grooming school! It was the National Cat Groomers Institute of America that I was going to! This soothed them a bit. It sounded reputable, and indeed it was, as well as much, much more.

So the adventure began, two weeks of heaven for a cat lover like me. Who wouldn’t love to immerse themselves in all things feline? I thought, breeds, colors, genetics…let’s do it! Of course I should have been thinking- scratching, biting, peeing…bring it on! The revelation that cat grooming was not for the weak or the faint of heart made it all the more desirable to me. It was definitely an intense and impressive two weeks, mastering techniques needed to conquer ferocious felines, we learned from the best. As it came time to depart the NCGIA, I was filled with confidence and pride, clutching my newly minted certificate, ready to take the feline world by storm.

Fast forward one year…I am running the only feline exclusive mobile grooming salon on the Monterey peninsula, as the premier certified feline master groomer in California, an excellent position to be in. The concept of a “certified” groomer specializing in cats has proven to be the ideal selling point. Since its inception, my mobile grooming venture has steadily gained momentum, attracting clients countywide. With each successful groom, my reputation has grown. In the early days, calls from clients often began with- “nobody can groom her… she bites” or my personal favorite- “last time he had to be sedated…I don’t think you can do it”. I chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve been trained for cats like that!” As the months passed, the calls began to change. Now they often start with, “I hear you can groom the wildest cats…maybe you can help me.”

It has been quite an exciting transformation. The knowledge, skills and courage I acquired at the NCGIA have carried me through, without fail, each and every time. Certainly, this adventure is still in its infancy. Every time I open the carrier of a new cat, I take a deep breath, hearing Danelle’s words, “You are faster, stronger and smarter than the cat,” and I get the job done.

The NCGIA has facilitated the realization of my dream. I would not be on this phenomenal journey had I not become a CFMG. Every day, when the catmobile roars to life, I am filled with excitement. What adventures will this day bring? Who will be my wild kitty? It is an incredible feeling, knowing you can accomplish what others are terrified to do. This is my idea of a meaningful life!”

Tiffany Lis CFMG
Sophisticats Feline Exclusive Mobile Grooming

 

Must Love Cats

I am recovering from a recent bout with the flu and some bronchitis thrown in for good measure.  I think the whole talking non-stop at Superzoo, redeye back to Greenville, followed by a long day of teaching a creative cat class and filming for Animal Planet took its toll.  I am not young anymore.  I don't bounce back the way I used to.

So now that I am back in a fully upright position, I wanted to tell everyone about our recent creative cat grooming class and the fun we had filming for an upcoming segment of "Must Love Cats."

John Fulton, the host of "Must Love Cats" was great fun to work with!  He joined our CFMGs during the lecture and demo portion of the class, learning right along with our fabulous Certified Feline Master Groomers who came back for some advanced training and practice.  We made John an honorary CFMG so he could attend the class for the day.

After the mini lecture and demo, where I did a 9/11 themed cat, the students each worked on a cat of their own.  John also participated.  Prior to the class, he had never groomed a cat before much less painted a design on one.  It was interesting, to say the least.

Although the segment was focused on creative cat designs, the conversation and questions inevitably veered toward basic professional cat grooming needs.  I am most happy about this!  While the creative stuff is fun, it certainly isn't essential and certainly not for the majority of cats.  However, I truly believe that all cats can benefit from some type of quality professional cat grooming at the hands of an educated cat groomer.  If the producers get that message across as they put this segment together, I will consider my exhaustion and ensuing ailments well worthwhile.

At the end of the day, a couple of our students went home with a new certification title (CFCG).  And the others went home with a new skill and a strong desire to craft nifty designs into cat hair.

We will definitely let everyone know when the episode is set to air on Animal Planet's "Must Love Cats."  We've been told it will be January or February.  Can't wait to see how it turned out!

 

The Year of the Cat

The newest video clip added to the NCGIA website.  Thank you Liz Boles, NCGIA Instructor, for putting this together to show a sampling of the publicity and buzz some of our graduates and CFMGs are garnering!  Can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!
The Year of the Cat

Good Employees & White Mochas

I am addicted to Starbucks. A mochaholic. I know they must put something in that espresso besides just coffee. Some secret ingredient that induces intense cravings and salivating at the mere smell of brewing espresso.

Because I’m a mochaholic, I frequent my local Starbucks regularly (like pretty much every day, I am ashamed to say). I totally respect Starbucks as a company. It represents a smart business model that any entrepreneur should pay attention to. From marketing to hiring and everything in between, Starbucks seems to have hit the nail on the head.

This is why it totally surprised me last week when I stopped in for my usual breve peppermint white mocha and saw four Starbucks employees just standing around. Not doing anything. There was a line-up of cars in the drive -thru and a line in front of me at the counter. One employee was working the barista bar, whipping out hot and cold drinks in record time. Her compadres, on the other hand, were doing pretty much nothing at all, save taking the occasional drive-thru order as the cars slowly moved forward, en route the to pick-up window.

At one point, the frantic barista ran out of coffee beans in one grinder and pumped the last of the vanilla flavoring from one of the bottles lined up in front of her. None of the other employees seemed to notice. Two of the girls were chatting with each other, oblivious to impatient customers, empty grinders, and toppled over vanilla flavoring bottles. The barista called to her fellow workers several times and finally shouted at one of the girls to help her out.

I was shocked by this. Starbucks had a reputation of quality and good service to uphold. So what was up with the lazy-ass employees, standing around, doing nothing until yelled at to move into action? This should not be!

I left with my white mocha some time later and pondered upon the scenario that had just unfolded in front of me. As a business owner, I know all too well that finding and hiring good employees is difficult. Keeping them can be a challenge, but the true challenge is finding them in the first place. Goodness knows I’ve had my fair share of hirelings who didn’t last very long. I’ve had employees lie to me, steal from me, sue me, not show up and then beg for their job back only to not show up again a few days later, and just about anything else you can think of. Once, I even had an employee who had been on the Jerry Springer show. And she was proud of that fact. (She lasted for 2 ½ days.)

But somewhere in the mess of lazy, self-centered employees who came and went, I’ve had a few really great employees. What makes a great employee?

For me, personally, a great employee is one who shows up on time (or calls ahead when circumstances prevent this from happening), is honest, trustworthy, diligent, and pays attention to what needs to be done and does it, without anyone having to say “do this.” The folks at Starbucks the other day, standing around, not paying attention……..not good employees in my book. They shouldn’t have to be told, “Hey, I need help. Get to work!”

At the NCGIA we have some amazing staff members. And I am truly thankful for them all! Each and every one of them does their job and does it well. Not only that, they pay attention to what is going on in the biz and jump in however they can to keep us moving forward. They see the big picture: a cat empire that can continue to grow if we all invest ourselves into it as if it belonged to each one of us. Which it does. An employee will only get a continual paycheck if they contribute to the coffers, moving the business forward. If you want to eat, you gotta bring in some bacon. A good employee ‘gets’ this. Dead weight drags and inhibits forward movement. It is as simple as that. A bad employee can suck the life right out of a business if not cut loose. No business = no job = no paycheck. Unfortunately employees like the ones I saw at Starbucks the other day do not understand this.

Finding and hiring good employees and getting rid of bad ones is an epidemic problem for small businesses, I do believe. I’m going to address this more in-depth in a little project I’m currently working on. Stay tuned………..

 

Dog Grooming Fiasco

My dog turned me into a Smurf.

It all started when I decided that it was time for a creative design change – out with the old, in with the new. That meant getting rid of Tru’s current leopard design.

I really wanted to leave the length on his coat as much as possible, so I originally planned on trimming off the leopard spots a little at a time as his coat grew out. Being tired of warm and neutral colors, my ultimate plan was to put some cooler colors on Tru – a nice shade of teal being my first choice. The transition would take some work and creativity and would be a bit bizarre. But even bizarre can look cool if done just right.

I was feeling adventurous so I decided I would try my hand at all-over color the “easy” way – mixing food coloring or Easter egg dye with vinegar and applying with a spray bottle. Sounded easy enough. I figured the spray bottle method would also be a lot cheaper and faster than my normal semi-permanent color application with an artist’s brush.

I’m not sure where I went wrong with the spray bottle method, but it might have had something to do with the fact that my Easter egg dyes were really old. My best guess is that the packet of tie-dye egg coloring liquids was about 5 or 6 years old – purchased back when I was a good mother and made a point to color eggs with my kids each spring. One day I realized that I was the only one in the family who actually ate the hard-boiled eggs after they were colored, thus turning me into a mother who denied her children the annual festivity of making an egg-coloring mess.

At any rate, the result of the greenish-blue, vinegar-reeking liquid in a spray bottle left absolutely no color on my Standard Poodle when all was said and done. Being a cat groomer, I tent to forget that when a dog is dripping wet, it naturally shakes its entire body, redistributing the wetness from its coat and onto anything within a 6 or 7 foot radius. Since I was well within the liquid-redistribution radius when Truman shook off his greenish-blue wetness, I was dripping in blue and smelling like a bottle of vinegar before I remembered that dogs shake when they are wet.

After wiping down myself and the entirety of the dog bathing room, I mixed together a hodge-podge of left over semi-permanent colors from my closet stash, in an attempt to get the teal color I was after. I didn’t have enough product to achieve the color intensity that I had hoped for, but at least the final result included actual color and was somewhat uniform. As an added bonus, I was not blue.

The first transition coloring gave Tru a nice, pale shade of teal over his leopard spots. Just for fun, I carved in some swirls on his hind end, mainly because I wanted to experiment with the look. If my freehand swirls didn’t turn out, I figured I could just “erase” them by shaving that area down with a #10.

After a trip to Boom Boom Beauty Supply for some more blue and green Avatar, I was ready to intensify the color. Being the busy woman that I am, I talked my daughter, Olivia, into applying the new color to Truman and giving him a good bath and blow dry. I explicitly told Olivia I wanted TEAL. I’m sure I remember this.

Olivia was doing me a huge favor so I can’t complain too much. But later, when she came home with Truman in tow, he was a shade of green I cannot even describe. He was akin to a giant pickle crossed with Gumby. Gumby green was not the look I was after. Considering Tru still had some leopard spots showing through the obnoxious green, he was downright ugly. Something had to be done to rectify this situation. I had a reputation to uphold.

So the next day, after class, I went to work on Truman. One more trip to Boom Boom and several hours of carving, coloring, bathing, and drying, Tru looked presentable enough. As it turned out, his new design and color have been rather attention-grabbing. We just returned from a vacation at the beach, where Tru had his photo taken by approximately 10,000 vacationers. It was impossible to go for a walk ANYWHERE without attracting crowds of people

.

This is the beauty of creative grooming. Sometimes it turns out as planned, but most of the time it does not, thus requiring more creativity to make it right. And sometimes the best designs are born out of mistakes. Experience is a great teacher. Trust me; I will never forget that dogs shake when they are dripping wet, lime green is more potent than other colors it is mixed with, old Easter egg dye doesn’t work past its shelf life, and Truman’s accidental hairdo made a lot of people smile.

(stay tuned for an upcoming CGQ: Creative Groomers Quarterly article on the variation of color intensity and how to achieve it or avoid it. Visit www.thenapcg.com to sign up for CGQ)

 

True or False - Dispelling Cat Grooming Myths