I began my cat grooming career in 2011 while volunteering for Seattle Persian & Himalayan Rescue. Someone had to clean their dirty ears, clip their ingrown nails, and shave or brush the mats out. It turned out I was pretty good at it, so I decided to fully dive in at one of the franchise stores — until one day in January 2013 when I got a call out of the blue from Dr. Chahna Ekstrom, owner of At Home Vet. She had been hearing a lot of wonderful things about me from her clients and offered me a position to be her exclusive cat groomer at her cat only boarding facility, Cozy Cat Boarding & Grooming, in Bothell, WA.

Over the next 2 years I was really able to hone my craft. I had gone from a place where I was grooming on average 12 – 18 cats every day to Cozy Cat where I was grooming 4 – 5 cats a day. Dr. Ekstrom had created a working environment where customer service and safe cat handling was paramount. At this point the bar had really been raised in the world of cat grooming. At any one time there were as many as 5 veterinarians, 10 veterinary technicians, and 4 cat boarding attendants watching and evaluating my work at some point in the day so I was sure to bring my A-game everyday.

In June of 2015 I purchased the cat grooming portion of the business and rebranded it/me as ‘Alex the Cat Groomer’ and the business has continued to grow at an incredible rate ever since.