You can ask for a person, not just a time.

The groomers

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  Owner & groomer

  Priya Raghunathan

  Priya opened the shop on Marlowe Row in 2017 and still takes a full table five days a week. Wire coats are her work: terriers, schnauzers and the hand-stripping that keeps a harsh coat harsh instead of soft and pale. She is the one who books hand-strips by consult, because the answer depends entirely on where a coat is in its cycle on the day.

  She also does most of the quoting at drop-off. If a price band moves, she would rather say so with the owner standing there than put it on an invoice.

  Keeps a jar of stripping chalk on the shelf that has outlasted two sets of shears.

  Ask Priya about

  Hand-stripping, and whether your dog's coat is ready for it.

  Wire and broken coats, and why clipping one changes it.

  What a price band is likely to land at for your dog.

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  Cat room

  Odalys Beltrán

  Odalys runs the separate cat room and takes the Tuesday and Thursday morning cat appointments. Cats are groomed here without sedation, which means the appointment is built around how much a particular cat will tolerate in one sitting rather than around a fixed service list.

  Sanitary trims, lion trims and matted long-haired coats are the bulk of her week. She will stop an appointment early and say so if a cat has had enough, and the price follows what was actually done.

  Works with the cat room lights down; the extractor fan is the loudest thing in there and that is deliberate.

  Ask Odalys about

  Whether your cat is a sanitary trim or a full lion trim.

  What sedation-free actually means for a cat that hates handling.

  Long-haired cats that have started matting behind the legs.

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  Groomer

  Tomasz Wiśniewski

  Tomasz takes the double coats: huskies, shepherds, retrievers, and every autumn the dogs whose owners have been told somewhere else that shaving would help with the heat. He does the de-shed work, which is a bath, a long forced dry and an undercoat rake rather than a haircut.

  Big dogs and long appointments are his default, so most of his table is in the morning drop-off window. He is also the one who lifts the seventy-pound dogs onto the table, which is why that size band moves to the morning.

  Times his own dries. Says a double coat is not dry until twenty minutes after you think it is.

  Ask Tomasz about

  De-shedding, and why a double coat is never shaved here.

  Large-breed appointments and the morning drop-off window.

  How often a heavy shedder actually needs to come in.

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  Groomer

  Junie Okafor

  Junie takes the puppy first visits and the dogs that arrive frightened. A first visit with her is short on purpose: a bath, a tidy, nails, and as much of the dryer and the table as the dog will accept, with the rest left for next time rather than forced through in one appointment.

  The rest of her week is curly and wool coats, where the whole job is finding a mat with a comb before it becomes a decision about shaving.

  Keeps the treat tin on the low shelf so a nervous dog can see where it lives.

  Ask Junie about

  Booking a first visit for a puppy, and what it will and will not include.

  A dog that has had a bad grooming experience somewhere before.

  Curly coats, comb-outs, and how to brush between appointments.