Her back end has gone matted and I've only just worked out she stopped grooming it

Bit of a confession post. Our Nell is 12, long-haired, and last week I found a mat the size of a golf ball behind her back leg, plus a lot of greasy clumpy fur along her spine near the tail. I honestly could not tell you when that started. She sits on my lap every evening and I stroke the front half of her, which apparently is the half I have been auditing.

Thinking about it, she also hasn't brought up a hairball since about Christmas, and she used to leave me one a fortnight on the stairs like a small unpleasant gift. I had been quietly pleased about that. Now I'm wondering if it means she just isn't grooming at all any more.

Nothing else obviously wrong. Eats, drinks normally as far as I can tell, still comes down the stairs, although now that I'm watching her she does sort of hop the last two rather than walking down them. Is a scruffy coat just an old cat thing you accept, or is it a symptom? And do I attack the mats myself or is that a bad idea?

Do not cut the mats out with scissors. I know that's the obvious answer and I know because I did it and put a 2cm hole in my cat's skin. Cat skin under a mat is loose and thin and it lifts up into the blades before you know it. Clippers or a groomer or the vet nurse, please.

The hairball thing you mentioned in passing is the bit I'd underline, not the mats. Same pattern here with Willow's sister: hairballs stopped, coat went scruffy, and it wasn't that anything had improved, it was that she had quietly given up on the difficult angles. Behind the back legs and the base of the tail is exactly where they stop first, because that's the reach that needs a twist.

And hopping the bottom two stairs is not nothing. Mine did that for months before anyone used the word arthritis at me. Cats don't limp much, they just do slightly less of everything and you think they're being lazy.

Malcolm, I have had this exact conversation with myself over my old boy's back end, so no judgement about the front-half audit, I think most of us do it.

The joined-up version of what you've described, matting at the base of the tail and behind the legs, hairballs stopping rather than increasing, and a change in how she does the stairs, is the picture that made me stop treating a coat as cosmetic. Grooming is athletic. A cat who is uncomfortable twisting stops doing the parts that require twisting first, and the coat is often the first visible evidence, well before anything that looks like limping. The site's guide to arthritis in cats covers the whole "doing less rather than hurting visibly" pattern, and the hairballs guide has the same point from the other direction: an increase means something, and so does a stop.

Two practical things from my end. First, mats need someone with clippers, and a vet nurse appointment is usually cheap and quick and safer than anything you'll do at home with kitchen scissors, as smudgesmum's story illustrates. Second, when you go, mention the stairs, not just the fur. In my experience the fur gets you the appointment and the stairs get you the actual answer.

I'm an owner and not a vet, so all of that is pattern-spotting rather than diagnosis. Nell's own vet can put hands on her, which is the only way anyone finds out if there's a sore hip in this.

Booked for Monday. Feeling faintly ridiculous about phoning up to say "my cat's fur looks bad and she hops down stairs" but the receptionist did not react as though it was an unusual call, which was reassuring in itself.

Not ridiculous at all. Ours went in for "the coat looks wrong" and came out with a plan for something completely different, and I still count it as one of the better decisions I've made about her.

Late update. Nurse got the mats off in about fifteen minutes with clippers, no drama, Nell was outraged but forgave me for a pouch of the expensive stuff. Vet had a proper feel of her hips and back and said there was definitely something going on there, and we've started a trial of pain relief with a recheck in a few weeks to see if she's brighter on it.

Too early to say if it's working. She did jump onto the kitchen counter on Tuesday, which is banned and which she has not attempted in about a year, so I'm choosing to take that as evidence and not as a discipline problem.