2005-10-07
Bath Time! Yay!
How about a little cat story?
I have two of them.
Cats, that is. Two cats. And a dog. I believe the dog is making me a cool spinster instead of one of those weird ones with the cats and the big flowery hat. None of my big hats have flowers.
It's not really a secret that my favorite pet is Grace, the big white cat that I have. This is a good argument for my lack of children, too. I tell Grace she's my favorite, in front of the other two animals. They don't give a crap now, but let's say they were children... I would have some legal issues, I bet.
Grace is more devoted to me than the dog is. She loves me and only me, no matter what and trust me, I've had to test her love. She has been written on - not about but actually ON. Her pretty little head was my canvas. She tipped over, hence shattered, a very expensive bottle of Absinthe, and she ended up with a big red "A" drawn on her snowy-white head.
She tipped over a bottle of Pom, on purpose, back when it only came in glass jars. Before I could stop her, she had laid down in the juice and it stained her shining fur a deep purple. I got all of that washed out but of course, at great expense to my expanse of skin. And it's the bathing that I need to address this weekend.
My cats are stereo-typical about their baths. They hate it. They are non-compliant at every turn. Grace purred the whole time I was drawing on her. She used to walk into the shower with me every morning and never seemed to notice that she was essentially in a bath.
But when it comes to the sink, a towel, and the Pantene that they know I use on them, all hell breaks loose.
Cats who are STARVING are suddenly nowhere to be found.
Once I found Maggie hanging by two paws and her claws inside a winter jacket because she knew that just around the corner from her, Grace was facing the ultimate torture and that she, Maggie, would be next.
I can't even get all of the soap off of Maggie when I bath her. For days, she walks around, looking like she sat in an oil slick when really, it's just Pantene that never got rinsed and that has started to break-down into little fatty molecules and lye.
Rosie is no help. She acts like the cats when it's time for a bath only instead of claws, she uses teeth.
I have never bathed those cats without ending up losing a shirt to their scratching and without totally having to change clothes from being SOAKED with furry sink water. By the time both kitties are bathed, I am usually crawling to the shower, already naked from the clothes having been shredded off of me, and with 8 inch scratches, dripping my blood all the way to the bathroom where I can sink into the comfort of my own safe place: the shower.
God knows they won't follow me.
I have no idea why any pet of mine would dislike bathing. I'm a freak for it. If we lived in Roman times, I bet I would have to get a job at a bath because I would be there twice a day. I can't stand not washing my hair, not shaving my legs, and not putting lotion on clean skin. It would drive me out of my mind, for real and forever, if it was 31 AD and I had to work in a bakery or something I couldn't get a bath every day. It would be the living end and I would wander the streets in my ladies toga (M) and talk to myself about the clogged pores and the eyebrow hair and the muddy crust on my feet.
So from way back, like many lifetimes back, I do not understand how not one of my three pets will tolerate bathing very well.
Rosie?
Dog?
Sure, she plays in the hose at every chance. She runs around when it rains and thinks Life! It's Great!
But the minute I grab that little screwball by the collar and drag her into the shower with me, her pointy ears flatten against her head and she starts to shiver like we live in Illinois and it's January and the heat is broken.
It's an act.
When I let her go, she immediately goes to her "safe place".
My bed.
Which I also do not understand. For as many times as that dog gets dragged off the bed while I shout "Alpha!" "Mine!" "Alpha!", you would THINK that she would no longer feel particularly safe there in the middle of my shitty bed.
But she does.
And she took her pig ear there last night while I was really busy with ummmmm.
well....
Survivor.
When a commercial came on and I realized that 8 minutes had passed wherein I didn't know where the puppy was, 'lo! I had FORGOTTEN that I have a PUPPY for 8 minutes.
8 minutes is all it took for said puppy to make my bed a disgusting trough of dried sow.
Ear.
An ear.
With veins.
But it's cool. Now I have clean sheets and impetus for doing the laundry.
Parts are parts and since they're just sitting there, Rosie might as well chew on them. It's the same principle that guides me to the Zapatos Muertos pile sometimes. They're there and she wants to chew something, better an old shoe than say, my arm.
But I cannot abide by the pets' lack of interest in bathing.
That's why they all get a lot of baths.
In fact, this weekend, I am going to test drive bathing the cats in the shower. I'm thinking it may be best to skip[ the formalities and strip down, kneel on the floor and hold each one down during her turn with the Pantene Demon. I end up bleeding, topless, and soaking wet anyway by the time I am done getting the first one wet, let alone shampooed, rinsed, and removed from the sink. I might as well start off ahead of the game and deal with the lacerations later. Plus, I'm short and at the sink, I don't have a whole lot of leverage. With the Shower Plan, I just hold them down, you know? There's no physics involved. I might not get clawed!
I'm going to lock all four of us in the bathroom with the shower running.
By the end of what I hope is less than 15 minutes, I should have three clean pets licking their "wounds" in their safe place, aka my bed, and I won't have lost a shirt to claws or my sweats to puppy teeth, which is the norm when it's bath time at my house.
Nope, this weekend?
We're going to have a little home-spun fun with the pets.
If my theory is correct, nothing intrinsically will change in terms of how these pets feel about bathing but my clothing will remain intact and I'll have planned on taking a shower, rather than cussing and heading to the shower to wipe off all of the blood that they draw when they're bathed in the sink.
You know what I need?
I need a wetsuit.
If I had a wetsuit, one with that chain-mail stuff that sharks can't bite through, I would be all set for bathing pets.
A wetsuit would be a win-win, now wouldn't it.
arizonasarah at 3:38 p.m.