Bubbles, bows and one very cross cat: inside the town’s grooming parlour

Owners bring their pets in at the front desk and say what they need, and every one is different. Hastings, a black standard poodle, comes in shaggy and goes out in a pom-pom cut: you drag the clippers over the fur that’s lit up and leave his pom-poms on his ankles, his tail and his topknot. Mop, an Old English sheepdog, has to be brushed out and have her fringe snipped a lock at a time, until two brown eyes blink out at you. Clover the lop-eared rabbit never goes in the bath at all: a gentle brush (too quick and she thumps her foot) and her claws snipped.

Bath time is the best bit. Rub the sponge over them until they are covered in bubbles (the muddy ones go brown first), then drag the shower over them until the suds slide off. Then stand well back, because they shake, and the water goes everywhere, the camera included. The dryer fluffs them up again. Flicker, a big fluffy grey cat, comes out of the dryer twice her size and very, very cross. Brush her knots out and she will purr. Eventually.

And it is not only dogs and cats. A hamster gets rolled round a dish of sand and then fed sunflower seeds until his cheeks are the size of his head. A chinchilla has a dust bath (“Never water for a chinchilla!”) and rolls right over in it. A corn snake needs her old skin peeling off, head to tail, in one long go if you can. A seventy-two-year-old tortoise has her shell scrubbed and polished till it shines. And now and then Wren from the Cosyford Wildlife Rescue drops in: a hedgehog with leaves in his spines, a koala with ears to fluff, a tiger cub who pounces at the brush, and a flying fox who hangs from her perch while you wipe her wings.

At the end each pet picks something smart off the wheel (a bow, a bandana, a bow tie; a fresh jumper for Frank the dachshund), gets a spritz of lavender, and has its photo taken next to the one from when it came in. “The shampoo is oat and aloe,” says Barbara. “The biscuits are oat. I’m quite keen on oats.”