We have three cats -- two that are eleven, both of which are long-haired (one tortoise shell calico - Dorry; one black persian- Dexter); and one tuxedo-colored short-haired (Mittens, who I affectionately call Demon) that we took in as a stray last year around Thanksgiving.
The two older cats are declawed; the new one isn't. So we trim her nails. She puts up a helluva fight when we do -- so during the first few times, we got scraped up a good bit. But she's calmed down lately. We don't have to worry as much about putting battle armor on when we cut her nails anymore. But we think Dorry is picking up some of Demon's bad habits.
Dexter and Demon are pretty good about keeping themselves up. Dorry never has been. I think she has some mental issues. She's always been kinda weird. She gets mats in her hair a lot. And she likes to hang out in the litter a lot. She would literally just sit there all day long if she could.
So anyway, getting to the point of the story here... It was time yesterday for the cats to be combed.
Dexter doesn't like it, but he took it like a man.
Dorry fought tooth and nail the entire way. She's never fought us like she did yesterday. I came away with a pretty interesting cat bite and my wife with some pretty bad scrapes on her arm. Eventually we wrapped her legs in a towel and did our best to comb her. The whole time I was combing her, I realized she just stunk. I mean, she just smelled really bad.
We decided while she was already in a bad mood that she was going to get a bath. This is always fun. I don't know what other people have to go through when they bathe their cat(s). Most people think that we're crazy that we bathe our cats when we tell them about it anyway. But Dorry does not like to take a bath at all.
Getting her into the water usually involves carrying her into the bathroom in such a way that she doesn't see the water until she's standing in it. We've tried walking her face first toward the tub before and she freaks out. She will kick, scream, and wail like you wouldn't believe.
Once she got into the water she just kept on wailing. She looks up with this expression as if she's saying "Why have you brought this upon me?" and just continues to wail. You try and put some shampoo on her and she squirms and wails the entire time. When you rinse her, she squirms and wails the entire time.
Eventually, she accepts her fate. But this usually takes about 10 minutes. So we eventually managed -- and she got through it fine.
The funniest thing though was when I flipped the drain switch and the water started to drain. She heard the water start to go down and watched it slowly get lower and lower and she tried to bolt right from the tub to avoid getting sucked down. In the end, there was a tub full of residual bubbles with this cat that looked like a water-logged rat standing in the middle.
She has so much fur that when she's dry she looks 2-3 times her actual size. She's really a skinny cat; you don't really know it until she's wet. We toweled her off as best as we could and tried to get her to stay in one place with a towel, but she refused to sit down. She went back to the door to the room where the litter is and just stared at the door. I was not about to let her in there to go sit down in the litter and get it all through her fur. I knew that's what her plan was.
Four hours later, the dry, clean cat was allowed access to her litter. I guarantee you she'll be reeking of it in just a few days.
1 comment:
Oh. My. Gosh. That looks like the least fun thing I can imagine. I will no longer dread bathing a squirmy, wailing baby.
Post a Comment