Your cat just spent twenty straight minutes in the middle of the hallway, ignoring you completely, working through what looks like a full-body grooming marathon. It's the middle of July. That is not a coincidence.
The actual mechanism
Cats don't sweat the way people do. Their sweat glands are limited to a few spots — mainly the paw pads, plus the chin and lips — and even paw-pad sweating is more of a stress response (that's why the exam table gets damp paw prints) than an actual cooling tool. The system cats really rely on to bring their body temperature down is grooming itself: spreading saliva across the coat so it evaporates off the skin, pulling heat with it. It's a built-in cooling system, just running on tongue power instead of a compressor.
That's why grooming sessions get longer and more frequent once the temperature climbs. It's not boredom and it's not vanity — it's thermostat maintenance.
Why that makes your job harder
More licking means more loose fur getting worked over, over and over, in the same session. On a coat that's still holding onto its winter undercoat, that repeated saliva-and-friction combo can felt loose fur into mats faster than it would on a milder day — especially at the friction zones a cooling cat hits hardest, like behind the ears, the armpits, and the base of the tail.
It also means more of that loose fur is getting swallowed instead of brushed away, which is its own kind of summer souvenir.
What actually helps
You can't out-brush a heat wave, but you can make the coat easier for your cat to cool through. Regular brushing at home clears out loose undercoat before your cat's tongue has to fight through it session after session. A professional deshed goes a step further, stripping out the dense layer trapping heat against the skin in the first place. Less insulation to lick through means shorter grooming marathons — and a cat that's actually cooling off, not just getting tired.
If the coat's already outpaced what a home brush can manage, a professional groomer can clear out the extra layer your cat's been licking against all summer.