Clinical Grooming, TANDEM Touch™ Training, and Professional Cat Handler Education
TANDEM Groomers is where the TANDEM Cat® method becomes teachable.
TANDEM Cat® is a trauma-informed, clinically grounded grooming system developed through real-world practice at Cats in the City. It was built for the cats traditional methods often fail: medically complex, behaviorally sensitive, aging, matted, shutdown, or commonly referred elsewhere for sedation.
This homepage connects the original TANDEM Groomers education system with the emerging TANDEM Touch™ training pathway: professional cat handler education for groomers, veterinary teams, boarding teams, rescue organizations, shelters, and feline care professionals.
Certified TANDEM Cat® Grooming sits inside a larger professional ecosystem connecting grooming, handling, observation, ethics, and trauma-informed feline care.
Clinical Grooming Education Built From Real Cats
TANDEM Cat® is not a single grooming technique, restraint trick, or handling shortcut. It is a clinical grooming and feline handling framework built from thousands of cats who required more than routine grooming.
The system integrates coat work, clinical observation, body support, two-person handling, environmental choreography, trauma-informed care, and ethical decision-making.
Grooming, Handling, Observation, and Care Are Connected
TANDEM Cat® is a clinical grooming framework for working with cats safely, precisely, and with a deeper understanding of regulation, physiology, coat burden, and behavior.
It does not treat grooming as separate from health, mobility, stress, or recovery. It treats coat, claws, posture, shutdown, reactivity, hygiene, movement, and intake as connected forms of clinical information.
Handling as Communication
Team-based handling that supports the feline body instead of overpowering it.
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Clinical Observation Skills
Reading posture, movement, tension, shutdown, resistance, and recovery as meaningful clinical signals.
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Body-Based Clinical Awareness
Reading coat burden, movement changes, posture, fatigue, shutdown, and physical limits as care-relevant information.
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Care Environment as Method
Designing sound, sequence, transitions, handling flow, and setup around feline thresholds.
Open page →TANDEM Touch™ Professional Cat Handler Training
TANDEM Touch™ training supports cat professionals across care settings.
This pathway supports groomers, veterinary teams, boarding professionals, rescue organizations, shelter teams, and behavior professionals who need stronger feline handling, observation, and trauma-informed care skills.
Feline Handling Training
The live training hub for professional feline handling, TANDEM Touch™, and clinical observation.
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Professional Training Overview
Training for veterinary, grooming, boarding, shelter, rescue, and behavior professionals.
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Understanding Feline Behavior
Behavior is communication, not inconvenience. Learn what cats are telling us during care.
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Trauma-Informed Feline Care
Understand fear, stress, emotional safety, regulation, trust, and recovery.
Open page →Start With the Live TANDEM Touch™ Training Cluster
These are the current live pages that form the training pathway. Each page supports a distinct part of the professional learning sequence: handling, observation, behavior, trauma-informed care, and TANDEM Touch™ principles.
Feline Handling Training
The central hub for professional cat handler education and TANDEM Touch™ training.
Open page →Clinical Observation Skills
Observation before intervention: posture, movement, resistance, recovery, and regulation.
Open page →Trauma-Informed Feline Care
How fear, stress, handling history, and emotional safety shape care outcomes.
Open page →Understanding Feline Behavior During Care
Behavior as communication during grooming, veterinary care, boarding, rescue, and handling.
Open page →The Pages That Define TANDEM Touch™
TANDEM Touch™ is the handling foundation behind the professional training pathway. These pages explain the philosophy, principles, ethics, and grooming application.
What Is TANDEM Touch™?
The core introduction to support-based feline handling through observation, trust, and touch.
Open page →The Principles of TANDEM Touch™
The guiding principles behind behavior-as-communication and support-based handling.
Open page →TANDEM Touch™ Grooming
How TANDEM Touch™ applies inside complex, real-world cat grooming sessions.
Open page →Solo Cat Grooming Ethics
Why staffing, support, restraint, and complexity matter in ethical feline grooming.
Open page →Applied Pages Behind the Grooming Method
These pages explain the applied grooming model: awake care, restraint architecture, solo grooming, certified facility standards, and how the grooming experience affects future care.
TANDEM Cat® Groomed Awake
The awake grooming authority page supporting the TANDEM Cat® clinical grooming model.
Open page →Restraint Architecture in Cat Grooming
How environment, staff support, sequencing, and restraint choices shape grooming outcomes.
Open page →What Is Solo Cat Grooming?
Clarifies solo grooming, supported grooming, and why complexity changes the handling equation.
Open page →Certified TANDEM Cat® Grooming Facility
Connects training, facility design, team handling, and care standards.
Open page →Coat Burden, Matting, and Somatic Entrapment
Professional cat handler education must include matting and coat burden because coat condition affects movement, comfort, hygiene, skin health, and quality of life.
Key Contributors to Matting in Cats
Why cats mat and how age, health, coat type, mobility, and access to care contribute.
Open page →The Felting Model
Matting understood as felting, not simple tangling.
Open page →Pre-Felt Somatic Entrapment Syndrome
Early coat compression as a somatic care issue before visible pelting develops.
Open page →Matting Severity Scale
A structured framework for communicating matting severity and care complexity.
Open page →Training, Publications, and Clinical Immersion
TANDEM Cat® is not learned through one product alone. It is supported through structured education, published work, and exposure to the clinical environment where the system was developed.
Certified TANDEM Cat® Groomer
Structured certification for professionals seeking a repeatable, trauma-informed feline grooming method.
Start certification →Books & Reference Materials
Published training materials that support clinical grooming, handling, and professional development.
View publications →Clinical Immersion
Limited onsite observation and training opportunities inside the Cats in the City clinical shops.
Learn more →Register Training Interest
Tell us about your role, organization, training goals, and the feline cases you encounter most often.
Open form →Published Work That Supports the Method
The TANDEM Cat® system is supported by a growing body of published training materials. These books function as working references for professionals seeking structured, case-based feline grooming and handling education.
TANDEM touch™ 10
An applied introduction to coordinated, trauma-informed feline handling.
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The Cat Grooming Encyclopedia
A multi-volume reference series covering foundations, advanced technique, and professional practice.
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Practice Workbook
Structured exercises and guided application for learners using the TANDEM Cat® system.
View publication →Built Inside Cats in the City
TANDEM Cat® was developed at Cats in the City, a feline-only clinical grooming and boarding practice in Portland and Beaverton, Oregon.
This is where the method was built, tested, and refined across thousands of real cases, including severe matting, coat burden, embedded claws, medical fragility, shutdown, boarding-related anorexia, and cats commonly referred elsewhere for sedation.
Clinical Case Examples Behind the Method
The TANDEM Cat® method was shaped by cats who required careful observation, skilled pacing, body support, and low-stress handling. These cases show why cat handler training has to be grounded in real feline bodies, not generic handling theory.
Pilikia
An 11-year-old Persian with a heart murmur and mobility challenges received carefully managed, low-stress grooming.
Dewey
A 19-year-old American Longhair received comfort-focused TANDEM Cat® grooming designed to support senior mobility, coat health, and low-stress handling.
Isis
A senior cat with kidney disease, asthma, arthritis, and skin sensitivity received slow, supported grooming tailored to her medical needs.
Ravi
A senior cat with strong awareness and balance variability received grooming focused on support, pacing, stability, and comfort.
Read Individual Cat Grooming Case Studies
These published case studies help show the clinical range of TANDEM Cat® grooming: senior cats, coat restoration, behavior-sensitive care, and medically aware handling.
Tuna
Senior cat grooming case study.
Open page →Dewey
Senior cat grooming case study focused on comfort and mobility support.
Open page →Benny
Cat grooming case study demonstrating clinical grooming decision-making.
Open page →Junie
Cat grooming case study from the TANDEM Cat® care model.
Open page →Advanced Handling for Fragile Cats
Senior and medically complex cats often reveal why TANDEM Cat® training matters. These pages connect professional handling to comfort, mobility, hygiene, dignity, and palliative care.
Senior Cat Grooming
How grooming changes when cats age, lose flexibility, or need more clinical support.
Open page →The Last Gift
End-of-life grooming as comfort care when dignity and relief matter most.
Open page →Grooming Suite End-of-Life Care
How grooming environments can support fragile cats and their families.
Open page →Deferred TANDEM Grooming
Why deferred coat care is often mistaken for a medical condition.
Open page →Clinical Scale and Training Authority
The TANDEM Cat® system was built through repeated exposure to complex feline grooming and care cases, not abstract theory.
Training, TANDEM Touch™, Matting, and Senior Care Pages
Clinical Grooming and Cat Handler Training Belong Together
TANDEM Cat® was not built as a course first. It was built in practice.
TANDEM Groomers exists to make that system teachable through certification, books, training materials, clinical immersion, case-based education, and the expanding TANDEM Touch™ professional handling pathway.
The future of cat grooming belongs to professionals who can see beyond coat and understand the cat beneath it.
TANDEM Cat®, TANDEM Touch™, and related TANDEM Cat® educational frameworks are proprietary to TANDEM Cat®. © TANDEM Cat®. All rights reserved.
Shawn and Dan are the inventors and developers of TANDEM Cat® Care, the founders of Cats in the City, and the founders of The TANDEM Cat® Institute. This method is a safer and more relaxed experience for your cat. When the TANDEM Cat® Grooming technique is used, two or more professional groomers attend to your cat, comfortably and naturally positioning them while the lead groomer focuses on the coat. Solo grooming involves only one groomer, which is unsafe and stressful.