Catty Shack Vac tames the hair after cat grooming
You could say that Danelle German has pioneered innovation in the world of cat grooming. “I was the first person to shave a cat live on stage,” she said.
And though some may laugh at her career, German has worked to legitimize cat grooming by developing a certification process, starting a cat-grooming school in the Upstate and speaking at grooming trade shows. She also holds the patent to the Catty Shack Vac, an animal drying system, and she recently developed a new cat shampoo, Chubbs Bars. Both products are manufactured in Greenville.
German, founder of the National Cat Groomers Institute of America, headquartered at 701 Pendleton St. in Greenville, said she ships Catty Shack Vacs around the world and also has a manufacturer in Australia.
How did you come up with the idea for the Catty Shack Vac?
Clients would walk into the salon on their way to work, especially guys dressed in their black slacks and black jackets. They’d drop off their cats to be groomed, and I’m blow-drying a Himalayan, which means there’s hair everywhere. I thought, “This is not a pleasant environment if you have to de-hair yourself on the way out the door. I’ve got to eliminate that.” Plus, I didn’t like it. I was eating it. It was in my eyes, and I was breathing it. I’m having hairballs myself. So I told my husband that we’ve got to fashion something that would suck that hair up. I actually went to Lowe’s and bought this industrial dust collector thing, and through that, we developed the Catty Shack Vac. My husband actually made the first prototype out of PVC pipe just to see if it would work. It fell apart very quickly, but it worked. Then he made one out of metal framing. And then someone put me in touch with a manufacturer.
You said your husband made the first prototype. Does he typically invent things?
He’s just a handyman. He’s good at that kind of stuff. But no, he is not an inventor or engineer or that type of thing. In fact, I said I will never invent anything ever again. It was a lot of work. But it’s part of growing that cat-grooming industry. You give the students and customers the skills to do it and the knowledge to do it, but they have to have tools to do it too.
Can the Catty Shack Vac be used for other animals?
They do put small dogs in them. Anything under about 40 pounds. There’s a woman I talked to in Illinois, and she bought one a number of years ago in Chicago when I was up there doing a show. She doesn’t groom cats at all, but she grooms a lot of shelties, and she said she ordered one just for the sheltie hair. Most people will say that it knocks 30 to 40 percent off their drying time as opposed to table drying. So that’s huge. If you can increase your production by 30 percent in a day, you pay for it very quickly. Some groomers pay for it in a week.
You recently developed a new cat shampoo. Why did you develop that?
I’d been using and recommending a shampoo made in New York for about 10 years, but that company has had some issues lately. I had customers coming to me saying that they can’t get this shampoo, so I worked with two chemists, exhausted their efforts and finally got to the point where I didn’t know what to do. Then, on a whim, I whipped up, in my Crock-Pot in my kitchen, a shampoo bar, and I called it Chubbs Bars because my cat’s name is Chubbs. And I said, “Chubbs, you’re getting a bath.” And I washed him in it and it was fantastic.
What’s your motivation for making these products?
It was to meet a demand. Every bit of it was to meet a demand. We’ve got a worldwide cat-grooming industry going on now.
