Long hair does not wait for a convenient week. A long coat tangles a little every day, felts a little more where friction works on it, and turns a fortnight of house-move chaos into mats that hurt — which is why the routine for a long-haired cat is built from a light daily pass underpinned by thorough sessions, and why it needs restarting in the new home before the boxes are even unpacked.
Where long coats mat first
Learn her friction map and start every session there: behind the ears, under the front legs, along the trousers, and under the collar line, where hair rubs hair or harness with every movement. Comb through to the skin in those spots daily, teasing apart any tangle that is beginning with your fingers while it still separates. Two or three times a week, extend the session through the whole coat in layers — chest, flanks, belly if she allows it, tail — so no region goes a full week untouched. A tangle caught on Monday is thirty seconds of fingers; the same tangle found next month is a felted mat against the skin and a job for clippers.
A settled room while the home is new
Groom in the room she has settled in, on bedding that came from the old house, at the same time of day, and let the routine arrive in the new home before almost anything else does — to a displaced cat, the daily comb-through happening exactly as it always did is evidence the world has not changed as much as it smells. Keep early sessions short, stop while she is still calm, and never haul her out of a hiding place to be groomed: skip the day instead. The habit will outlast the move; her trust in it might not, if the first sessions in the new house are chases.
Daily passes and the thorough sessions
The two tiers need different things remembered, which is where sharing the routine gets untidy: one person does a quick pass and believes the thorough session happened, another repeats the ears and misses the trousers entirely. Write the pattern down as plainly as it is simple — daily friction spots, layered session on named days — and note what each session actually covered, plus anything felt under the coat while your hands were in it. Long coats hide skin changes well, so the hands-on check for lumps, scabs and sore spots is part of the job, not an extra. Within a few weeks the rota will feel like part of the new house itself.
Through Care Teams in KinsLe, the household shares one long-coat rota, and the timestamps prove the ears, legs and trousers were checked, not just the easy back.