Recession Haircut

Every summer (for the past 2 summers, at least) we have dropped Cosmo off at the vet and returned a matter of hours later to a terrified, freakish version of his former self. He is so, SO big, with such long hair and such affection for stickers and all sorts of ghastly things a cat can roll around in, that to maintain a proper humans-to-plant-and-insect ratio inside the home we have to do some feline deforestation. Well, this year there is an economic decline- maybe you've heard a thing or two about it, i dunno, EVERYWHERE- so we thought we'd give the DIY try and shave the poor guy ourselves. For the record, this is what he looks like normally:

This is how he turns out when the professionals do it:

And this is what he looks like after 3 of us screw around with the electric razor for 10 minutes before realizing it's 11pm and this will have to take at least an hour: