THE ORIGIN OF TANDEM CAT GROOMING™

Our Origin: From Resistance to Redefinition

Shawn and Daniel Lioyryan are co-founders of TANDEM™, a trauma-informed clinical grooming system designed to bring measurable comfort, fluency, and dignity to cats experiencing coat failure, tension-bound movement, or trauma-related shutdown. Their journey began not in a grooming school—but in early experiences that revealed the ethical cracks in conventional pet care systems.

As young animal lovers, they saw the disconnect between marketed affection and real welfare. As professionals, they encountered the same failures—this time inside grooming shops, veterinary clinics, and shelters unequipped to meet the behavioral, biomechanical, and emotional needs of feline clients.

Rather than replicate the system, they decided to re-architect it.

TANDEM™ was born from that decision: a clinical-grade, two-person handling method designed to safely and fluently care for cats with complex coat conditions and nervous system distress. What began as a series of structured handling moves became a canon of protected intellectual property, including:

• The Felting Model™

• The Matting Severity Scale™

• The TANDEM Touch 10™ Technique

• Quality-of-life intake and recovery tools

• End-of-life trauma resolution protocols

Over thousands of documented sessions, Shawn and Daniel discovered a new truth:
Grooming is not cosmetic. It is care. And in the right hands, it can become a turning point for medically fragile, behaviorally complex, or end-of-life cats.

Today, TANDEM™ is a licensed system used by veterinary teams, trauma-aware caregivers, and interdisciplinary clinical partners. It represents a departure from profit-driven handling and a commitment to Better Care for Cats.

Whether through direct care or organizational licensing, Shawn and Daniel remain dedicated to one core belief:

Where anesthesia ends… TANDEM™ begins.

Become a Tandem Cat Groomer.