Explore the TANDEM Cat® Method
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 page explains what the method is, what makes it different, and how professionals can learn it through certification, publications, and clinical immersion.
- What TANDEM Cat® means
- Why team-based grooming changes outcomes
- How support positions work
- Where the method was developed
- How to learn the system
What TANDEM Cat® Means
TANDEM Cat® is a clinical grooming framework for working with cats safely, precisely, and with a deeper understanding of regulation, physiology, coat burden, posture, movement, and behavior.
It does not treat grooming as separate from health, mobility, stress, or recovery. It treats coat, claws, hygiene, shutdown, reactivity, and handling tolerance as connected forms of clinical information.
In this model, the groom is never just the groom. The body is being read the entire time.
The Method Is Built on Four Core Elements
Team-Based Support Instead of Solo Restraint
TANDEM Touch™ is not a single hold. It is a support choreography in which two practitioners distribute stabilization, monitoring, and procedural access across the system instead of forcing one person to do everything through the cat’s body.
This changes what becomes safely possible in medically complex, behaviorally sensitive, or high-risk grooming cases.
The Cradle
The cradle replaces compressive restraint with full-body support. Thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic organization are carried by the system rather than concentrated into the cat’s body.
This creates stability, improves respiratory tolerance, and allows care to proceed without defaulting to force-heavy control.
The Hover
The hover preserves support without converting contact into pressure. It is one example of how TANDEM Cat® adjusts touch, weight, and proximity based on feline threshold, body burden, and procedural need.
Support in this system is dynamic. It changes with the cat.
The Edge
The edge creates procedural access without abandoning body organization. In TANDEM Cat®, access is not purchased by sacrificing stability. It is built through position, timing, and coordinated support.
The Comfort Hoodie
In the TANDEM Cat® model, regulation tools are not decorative add-ons. They are part of the care architecture. Sound buffering, containment, and nervous system support matter because feline tolerance is shaped by the environment as much as by touch.
Why This Method Exists
TANDEM Cat® was developed because conventional one-person grooming systems routinely fail the cats who need the most support. In solo systems, the same practitioner must restrain, position, monitor, and groom all at once. The result is that instability is transferred into the cat’s body.
TANDEM Cat® replaces that architecture with shared stabilization, distributed attention, somatic pacing, and feline-specific environmental design.
The method exists because cats deserve systems designed around their bodies, their thresholds, and their welfare—not around the limitations of solo human handling.
What This System Has Already Made Possible
Developed in Real Practice at Cats in the City
TANDEM Cat® was developed at Cats in the City, a feline-only clinical grooming and boarding practice in Portland, Oregon.
It was built, tested, and refined across thousands of real cases including severe matting, coat burden, ingrown claws, medical fragility, shutdown, boarding-related anorexia, and cats commonly referred elsewhere for sedation.
This is why the method is grounded. It did not begin as curriculum. It began as clinical necessity.
The TANDEM Cat® Educational Pathway
Tandem Groomers exists to make the TANDEM Cat® system teachable. Professionals can enter the method through certification, publications, and limited onsite clinical immersion.
TANDEM touch™ 10
An applied introduction to coordinated, trauma-informed feline handling.
View publication →
The Cat Grooming Encyclopedia
A multi-volume reference series covering foundations, advanced technique, and professional practice.
View publication →
Practice Workbook
Structured exercises and guided application for learners using the TANDEM Cat® system.
View publication →Bottom Line
TANDEM Cat® is a clinical grooming system developed in real feline practice for cats who require more than conventional handling.
It combines team-based stabilization, somatic observation, environmental choreography, and clinical reasoning into a repeatable method that changes what is safely possible.
For professionals who want more than technique alone, this is the system to study.
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.