Cat Grooming: Ear Cleaning

Video Transcript

"Maylee is going to be cooperative I'm sure in letting us examine and clean her ears today. So the first thing you want to do is sort of flip the ear back like this so you can get a look inside, push the hair away and you can check and see if there is a lot of dirt and wax or if it looks pretty good. Maylee's ear looks actually quite clean and healthy looking. We'll check the other one too so this is a good habit for you to get in with your cat, checking periodically, maybe a couple of times a week checking for any wax or debris that might build up. She has a little bit of wax there so I'm going to show you how to clean the ears now. What I do with a cat whose ears are this clean is probably just put a little bit of my ear cleaner, disinfectant ear cleaner, on the gauze and then just flip that ear back and wipe away on the outside any little bits of wax that you can see and then lift out. So as you are cleaning one of the things you want to remember to do is lift out. Otherwise you'll pack any wax down into the ear canal and you definitely don't want to do that so you'll start on the surface and you'll wipe out as you go. See there is a little bit of wax there that we got off on the gauze. Now the next step is to use your Q-tip and just get in any little cracks or crevices in her ears and you can see there is a little bit of wax on that Q-tip even so when her ears look that clean. Cats have a horizontal canal, so I'm actually hitting bottom right now in this vertical canal and then the ear canal goes in before you hit the ear drum so you can safely use a Q-tip to safely clean out any wax down in there."