Grooming a Javanese cat after flea comb damage

A flea comb through a long coat is a really easy mistake to make — the teeth are so close together they grip every strand and essentially rip through knots rather than work through them. On a Javanese especially, where the coat is silky and fine, that does real damage fast. The difference between a well-maintained long coat and a matted disaster is usually just the right tool used consistently — and the wrong brush doesn't just fail to help, it actively makes things worse. Can you tell me: how bad is the coat right now — are there actual mats forming, or is it mostly broken and rough? And has your cat become wary of being groomed after the experience?

That makes complete sense — she now associates the comb with discomfort, so she's bracing every time you touch her. The good news is a 3-year-old Javanese with small mats is totally recoverable, and once you're using the right tool she'll likely calm down once she realises it doesn't hurt. Before I point you to the right comb, just want to check: are the mats still soft and pliable, or have any of them tightened up close to the skin? That affects whether you can work through them yourself or whether one of them might need a vet or groomer to take off safely first.

Understood. The soft ones under her arms you can definitely work through yourself with the right tool. The tight ones behind her ears — I'd be honest with you — if they're sitting close to the skin, trying to comb them out risks pulling the skin and that'll make her trust problem much worse. A groomer (not necessarily a vet) can clip those off in about two minutes without any trauma, and it won't affect the coat long-term. Then you start fresh with a proper tool. For the comb itself, I'd recommend the Andis Steel Comb with both coarse and fine teeth — it's a single comb with two sides, widely spaced teeth on one end and medium on the other. You always start on the coarse side, working from the tips up toward the skin in small sections, never root to tip. It glides through Javanese silk rather than gripping it, so there's no tearing. Once the coat is clear, a weekly run-through with this takes about ten minutes and you'll never get mats like this again. It's around £12–15 on Amazon UK and it's genuinely the one tool I'd tell every long-haired cat owner to own.

Yes — just leave the mats alone for now. Don't try to pick at them or use anything else on them. If you want to do something positive in the meantime, get a very soft slicker brush and just do gentle surface strokes on the parts of her coat that aren't matted — no pressure, no working into tangles. It starts to rebuild her confidence around grooming without any risk of tightening the mats further. When the Andis arrives, tackle the soft underarm mats first in good light, work in sections no wider than your thumb, and hold the hair at the root with your other hand so any resistance is taken by your fingers and not her skin. She'll tell you quickly that this one doesn't hurt.

Good — it's genuinely fixable and you caught it at a reasonable stage. Short groomer visit for the ears, Andis comb for everything else going forward, and within a few sessions she should stop dreading it. Javanese coats are beautiful when they're maintained right and they respond well once the tool is correct.