If you groom cats in Calgary, Halifax, or Winnipeg, I'd bet actual money you've never once considered listing your business on CatGroomingDirectory.com. Not because you looked and decided against it — because a site with a .com and a name like that reads as American, so you never bothered to check. Meanwhile the directory has covered 8 Canadian provinces and 21 cities since June, and every week another Canadian owner searches "cat groomer near me" and lands on a page that's quietly missing you.
I built this site myself. I also run a grooming salon in Missouri, so I know exactly how little bandwidth a working groomer has for "check if some website added you yet." This post is the five-minute version: how to find out if you're already on there, how to claim or add your listing either way, and the handful of Canada-specific things — currency, licensing, provinces we don't cover yet — that are worth knowing before you do it.
What most Canadian groomers get wrong about directory listings
The mistake isn't laziness. It's a reasonable-sounding assumption that turns out to be wrong: "that's a US directory, it won't have Canadian cities." I get why people land there. Most pet-industry directories genuinely are US-only, or bolt Canada on as an afterthought with three cities and stale data. So Canadian groomers develop a habit of skipping the "is this for me" question entirely and just not looking.
The second mistake, for the smaller number of groomers who do check and find their city covered: assuming that because the directory looks American, the process must be built for American businesses only — American tax forms, American licensing questions, a form that's going to reject a postal code. It isn't. The claim and listing forms take a city and a province exactly the way they take a city and a state. Nobody's filtering you out at the door.
Why standard "get listed on directories" advice doesn't work here
Most advice about local business directories assumes a few things that don't hold for a Canadian cat groomer looking at a site headquartered in the US: that pricing will show up in your currency, that licensing questions will match your regulatory reality, and that the directory actually has your market covered rather than a handful of flagship cities.
None of those assumptions are automatically true, and none of them are automatically false either — you actually have to check, market by market, directory by directory. On this one specifically: pricing displays in CAD on the province cost pages, but any paid listing tier you personally purchase bills in USD. Licensing questions don't apply the way they might on a US-facing form, because pet grooming isn't a licensed trade in Canada the way, say, cosmetology is in some US states — there's no government body handing out cat-groomer credentials for a form to ask about. And coverage is real but not universal: 8 provinces, 21 cities, Quebec excluded by design for now. Generic "how to get listed on directories" advice can't tell you any of that. You have to look at the actual site.
A framework that actually works
1. Check before you assume. Search your province and city on the directory before deciding whether any of this applies to you. Takes two minutes, settles the question for good instead of leaving it as a vague "probably not" in the back of your head.
2. Claim beats add, when claiming is possible. If a listing already exists for your business — pulled in during the original province launch, or added by someone else — claiming it is faster than starting fresh, and it puts you in control of the photos, hours, and description instead of leaving whatever was there originally.
3. Add doesn't mean paperwork. If nothing exists yet, the "not listed" path is a short form, not an application. Business name, contact info, city and province, a description of what you do. Free listing requests go through a weekly review, not an instant automated approval, so build a few days into your expectations rather than refreshing the page the next morning.
4. Get your city right, not just your province. The directory organizes by province, then city — same structure as the US state-then-city pages. A listing filed under the wrong city, or with your service area vaguely described as "the Prairies," is a listing that won't surface when someone searches the actual city you work in.
5. Know the currency split before you decide on a paid tier. Cost estimates for cat owners display in CAD across every province page. If you personally choose to buy a paid listing upgrade later, that transaction runs in USD. Neither is wrong — they're just two different things, and conflating them is how a business owner ends up annoyed at a bill that was accurate the whole time.
What you can do this week
Search your city. Go to the Canada section of the directory and look up your province, then your city. Either you're there — in which case, move to claiming — or you're not, in which case you already know what step two is.
Claim it if it's there. An existing listing means someone else's information is currently representing your business to potential clients. Claim it, fix anything wrong, add real photos of your own space and your own hands doing the work — not a stock photo, a client's cat mid-groom on a calm day if you can manage it.
Submit it if it's not. Fill out the free listing request with accurate contact info and an honest description of your services. If your city genuinely doesn't have any coverage yet, being the first listing there isn't a consolation prize — it's the best possible position, since you're the only result when someone searches.
Write your description like a Canadian client, not an American one. Small thing, easy to miss: if your description was copied from an old bio written for a different context, check that it reads naturally to someone booking in your actual city, in your actual language of business. A generic "serving pet owners nationwide" line reads oddly on a page clearly built around your specific province.
Want the full system?
This post covers the five-minute version — find yourself, claim or add, get the city right. The paid version goes further: the actual step-by-step for both the claim and add paths with what each form field is really asking, the GST/HST registration threshold every solo Canadian groomer should know before it sneaks up on them, what "no licensing requirement" does and doesn't mean province to province, and how to think about the currency split if you're weighing a paid listing tier. Read The Canadian Cat Groomer's Complete Listing & Business Playbook if you want the whole thing laid out once instead of figuring it out as you go.
FAQ
Is CatGroomingDirectory actually free for Canadian groomers, or is that a US-only offer? Free means free, full stop, regardless of what side of the border you're on. Claiming an existing listing and submitting a new one both cost nothing. Paid tiers exist if you want more visibility later, but nobody's required to touch them.
Does the directory support Quebec? Not right now. The site covers 8 provinces — British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador — and Quebec was deliberately left out of this launch for language-scope reasons. If you're outside Quebec, you're covered.
My city isn't showing any listings yet. Does that mean I can't be added? No — it usually means nobody in your city has claimed or submitted a listing yet, which is actually the best time to be first. Submit through List Your Business either way; if your city genuinely isn't in the system, you'll hear that directly instead of guessing.
Do I need a Canadian business license or cat-grooming certification to get listed? No license or certification is required to list. Pet grooming isn't a government-regulated trade anywhere in Canada — Government of Canada Job Bank listings confirm there's no mandatory licensing or certification to work as a groomer, though your municipality may still require a general business license, so check locally.
Will I be charged in Canadian or US dollars? US dollars, on any paid tier. It's worth knowing before you upgrade, not after your card statement shows up with a number that doesn't match what you expected.
Is there a French-language version for bilingual clients? Not currently — the whole 8-province Canadian side of the site runs in English only. If you serve bilingual clients, your listing description is still yours to write however you want; just know the surrounding site chrome won't switch languages.
You built a real business without a government body ever handing you a permission slip for it. Don't let a .com that sounds American talk you out of five minutes and a free listing.
Courtney
Cat grooming expert and contributor to Cat Grooming Directory. Passionate about helping cat owners find the best grooming solutions for their feline friends.