Question
So my cat (almost 2 years old) somehow got urine on the back of her neck, so to clean it up we used a small amount of diluted human shampoo on a towel to wash her fur. It didn’t go into the skin much (if at all), but now I've seen that human shampoo shouldn’t be used on cats!
It was a very small amount of shampoo on one section of the cat, will she be okay or do we need to do anything?
Thank you!
Answer
It sounds like you did the best thing you could do in the given situation.
One of the main reasons why you shouldn't use human shampoo on a cat (or bathe it at all if it's not absolutely necessary) is that human skin is more acidic than cat skin. Bathing a cat with human shampoo would feel like washing yourself with undiluted vinegar. In addition to that, cats produce almost no sebum (skin oil) at all. The sebum protects the skin and hair from drying out and getting damaged, but it also makes the hair look oily.
Most humans can go a week at most without washing their hair. After a few days the human body already produces so much sebum your hair looks oily. Human shampoo is designed to wash that amount of sebum away.
A cat's skin produces so little sebum it takes them several weeks--up to several months--to produce enough sebum to recreate the protective skin barrier again. Washing cats with human shampoo dries their skin out rather extremely and causes irritation, itching and scratching, and other symptoms of dry skin like dandruff; it can also increase the risk of skin infections. Some ingredients in human shampoo can even poison your cat!
Rubbing the dirty fur with plain water or a specialized cat shampoo is the best way to remove dirt from the fur. Very diluted baby shampoo seems to be the next best option and some people use very diluted dish soap.
One last note: at 2 years of age it is no longer a "kitten," it's an adult cat ;)
Answered By - Elmy