The Cat Bathing Chronicles
Monday, June 29th, 2015 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amarie24Trigger Warnings: Cat distress & anxiety
So my wittle baby boy Dante is already three-years-old as of April this year (*sniffle-sob*…how the fuck does time pass so quickly?!) and he’s been struggling with fleas. The pesky lil’ bastards. Alas, it was time to give him a full bath a few days after we gave him a flea pill, Capstar.
I waited until my mama wasn’t home so we’d both have some, uhh…space. Yeah.
The first order of business was to bathe Dante in my mama’s bathroom because her tub has a stopper while mine does not. And don’t worry, she knew I was bathing him in her bathroom, haha. So I waited until he was in that state only cats ever really get into-he’s lounging, half napping and half just watching the world go by. So Dante was pretty languid for me. I had the following in my arsenal:
• Dawn dish soap
• At least three towels, one to wrap & comfort Dante in after his bath and the rest for the wet mess that’s sure to cover the floor
• A pillowcase on stand-by, for a entrap-the-kitty-to-bathe-him trick someone over at Shakesville taught me about
• Our large measuring cup, filled with warm to lukewarm water for rinses
• Mama’s bathtub, filled enough for Dante’s paws to be submerged
• My large, thick Southpole jacket to cover my arms & two mismatched rubber gloves to cover my hands
• Socks for my feet to ensure I won’t slip on the sure-to-be-wet floor
So the next thing was picking Dante up, carrying him into the bathroom and shutting the door. Yes, shutting the door is absolutely key in preventing any grand escapes to underneath the bed, inside the cabinet, etc. You must close the door.
I put Dante down and he looks at me curiously, wittle pink ears swiveling. “Mama, why are we in Grandma’s bathroom? Why’d you put me in here? What are we doing?”. D’aaw…
Gloves still on, I try to put Dante into the bathtub and…we learn immediately that doesn’t work. Dante finally catches on to what we’re in the bathroom for, jumps out the bathtub with a face that says “Fuck no!” and runs straight to the door.
I try to comfort Dante and call him back to get into the bathtub and I am met with hisses and growls. Okay. Option two, plan b comes into play:
The measuring cup!
My measuring cup is already filled with warm water and just a little bit of Dawn dish soap. I pour it over Dante’s body and Dante hisses and growls, “Lady, you best never do that to me again and stay the hell away from me with that measuring cup!”. Dante tries to run away from me, but he only comes deeper into the bathroom and I can easily catch him with the measuring cup. My poor baby was just a miserable lil’ thing.
So it was literally me just chasing my cat all around the bathroom with the measuring cup full of warm, soapy water and trying to bathe him. Like, ya’ll. My mom’s bathroom became Dante’s entire bathtub.
Lemme repeat that: My mom’s bathroom became Dante’s entire bathtub.
There wasn’t any way in hell I could get Dante to stay in the actual bathtub, so I picked my battles. Yes, I did. I picked my battles.
And my poor baby boy was just trying everything in his power to get away from me and my dreaded measuring cup-full-of-warm-Dawn-dishwater. Lawdeh, my poor baby. He jumped onto and from the sink, tried to hide in the shadows behind the toilet (but he’s a white boy with big ass blue eyes, so I could see him perfectly), he tried to push through the door as though it would open, and he clawed at the walls and doors. Most of our dialogue went something like this:
Dante: “Hiss! Spit! Claw!!”
Me: “Dante! Please come back here! If you’d just stayed in the bath tub in the first place, we would’ve been done with this shit over thirty minutes ago!”
Dante: “Growl! Whine! Deeper growl!”
Me: “Young man! Stay still, dammit and watch that tone of yours towards your mama!”
Dante: “Whines again and tries to open the door!”
Me: “Dante, just stay still! Lemme get your head real quick and-gah! Now you got both of us drenched!”
Dante: “Could give two shits and runs to the other end of the bathroom, near the bathtub. Whines!”
Me: “Dante, please! For the love of catnip and kitty litter, stay your white boy ass still!”
Dante: “Growls the song of Satan!”
I swear, it was both one of the most hilarious and terrifying times of my life as a cat owner. I’m telling ya’ll.
My poor wittle Dante looked like a drowned meerkat and was just as miserable. When I was all done, I tried to come at him with the nice, warm fluffy towel to dry him off and hold him. But he must’ve thought that I meant to entrap him because he hissed something awful at me and the towel. That hiss translated into, “Mama, fuck you, that towel and this entire bathroom! I’m gone!”. And wittle Dante promptly ran out of the bathroom (I’d opened the door by now) and into the living room, where he left wet spots all over the coffee table, couch and chairs.
I spent the rest of that night cleaning up house. My mama’s bathroom was utterly destroyed. And outside of that, I cleaned up all the places where Dante rested and/or played to ensure that as many of those fleas as possible were gone.
And through it all, Dante barely let me brush him. I still got some cuddles in the morning, though. So I was forgiven.
Unfortunately, since I only scrubbed at Dante with my gloves on, I didn’t get all of the fleas with a good bathing. So I had to try again with bare hands the day after the next. Ugh. I wanted those little pesky pest motherfuckers off my baby!!!!
I was pretty scared because Dante is fuckin’ highly intelligent and strong-willed as hell…and I was going in there to bathe him with bare hands.
Eeek.
I didn’t want to get my hands all scratched up, but dammit, I had to try and bathe my baby boy again. Had to take care of my wittle Dante.
So I did try. Pretty much same deal, same material. Except this time? I didn’t bother a whit with filling up my mama’s bathtub and I laid towels on just about every single square foot of floor in my mama’s bathroom.
Ya’ll see where this was going.
Yep. It is true: I wholeheartedly learned my lesson and Dante and I were just gon’ wing it by once again turning my mama’s bathroom into his bathtub.
I was wearing my thick Southpole jacket again but, this time, I decided to go barehanded. I needed to get my nails deep into Dante’s fur, to his skin to get rid of these bastards. But I still didn’t want Dante to scratch my skin up.
I was really, really scared this time.
Dante caught on immediately to what was going on. Therefore, as soon as I put him down, he whined and went to claw at the door. And off we started with the measuring cup, this time only full of warm water.
There was, predictably, more hissing and spitting and whining and growling. But what surprised the living hell out of me? When I got my hands wet and lathered with Dawn dish soap and went to lather Dante’s fur with my bare hands? And, mind you, I did this while he was making his displeasure known?
He let me.
Even as he was growling and snarling and hissing…he still let me touch him. It was just the water that he didn’t like, the water that was making him miserable. Hell, I could even get in there and scrub under his chin and on his belly. I was actually allowed to scrub under his chin even as he was growling up a storm. He’d even stay still and lie down for me. Guess shit really does count when you’re the mama of a cat, huh?
I think, that time around, the biggest difference was how I used my voice. During the first time, I was partially amused and mostly terrified, so I kept laughing. I think my laughter really spooked the shit out of Dante. But the second time, I just kept my voice low and soothing, assuring Dante that we were almost done, I didn’t like this anymore than he did and if he’d just hold still for one more moment, I’d be able to get whatever part I was working on at the time. Yep, yep, yep. Dante was a hell of a lot more cooperative than I thought he would be.
Oh, and yes, the floor was completely soaked even with the towels. In that way, neither one of us could win. But we tried. I promise ya’ll, we tried.
So I did manage to get in there after all and just scrub, scrub, scrub my baby’s fur and skin to cleanliness! And goodness gracious…that white boy has some healthy ass pink skin, I tell ya’ll. Healthy ass pink skin under all that fur.
I got as many of the fucking fleas as I could, sometimes even pinching them and running them under the sink’s faucet. Sons of bitches needed to get off my baby.
Just about everything was going dandy until it was finally time to rinse Dante off. Ohhh, I got that measuring cup in my hand and wittle Dante got up and ran to that door again. Lawdeh. At that point, it didn’t matter how low and soothing I kept my voice, Dante does. Not. Like. That. Measuring. Cup. At. All. The floor got even wetter and then it all really went to hell when…
…Dante jumped into the little dresser’s cubby hole where my mama keeps her undergarments and huddled there in an effort to get away from the water.
Like…seriously. This dripping wet cat that probably still has some fleas on him leapt onto my mama’s undergarments. Poor Dante was just that traumatized.
I cannot make this shit up.
So in addition to all the other shit I had to clean up after releasing Dante to dry paradise, I had to just go ahead and wash all those undergarments because I wasn’t taking a chance. And even if there were no fleas that jumped on them, well…I didn’t want my mama’s bras and panties to be all damp when she came in from work that morning. Plus, it was the least I could do for Dante and I destroying her bathroom for the second time in just one week.
In the end?
Wittle Dante was bathed well and that white boy’s fur was nice and soft and fragrant as hell. We gave him his Capstar pill (put it in his food) too. Unfortunately, I don’t think all the fucking fleas are gone, but he hasn’t been scratching all that much. So…maybe it was a success? If not, we’ll be trying something else.
So yeah! That is the Cat Bathing Chronicles! Please do share any of your Cat Bathing Chronicles stories in the comments, lovelies!
So my wittle baby boy Dante is already three-years-old as of April this year (*sniffle-sob*…how the fuck does time pass so quickly?!) and he’s been struggling with fleas. The pesky lil’ bastards. Alas, it was time to give him a full bath a few days after we gave him a flea pill, Capstar.
I waited until my mama wasn’t home so we’d both have some, uhh…space. Yeah.
The first order of business was to bathe Dante in my mama’s bathroom because her tub has a stopper while mine does not. And don’t worry, she knew I was bathing him in her bathroom, haha. So I waited until he was in that state only cats ever really get into-he’s lounging, half napping and half just watching the world go by. So Dante was pretty languid for me. I had the following in my arsenal:
• Dawn dish soap
• At least three towels, one to wrap & comfort Dante in after his bath and the rest for the wet mess that’s sure to cover the floor
• A pillowcase on stand-by, for a entrap-the-kitty-to-bathe-him trick someone over at Shakesville taught me about
• Our large measuring cup, filled with warm to lukewarm water for rinses
• Mama’s bathtub, filled enough for Dante’s paws to be submerged
• My large, thick Southpole jacket to cover my arms & two mismatched rubber gloves to cover my hands
• Socks for my feet to ensure I won’t slip on the sure-to-be-wet floor
So the next thing was picking Dante up, carrying him into the bathroom and shutting the door. Yes, shutting the door is absolutely key in preventing any grand escapes to underneath the bed, inside the cabinet, etc. You must close the door.
I put Dante down and he looks at me curiously, wittle pink ears swiveling. “Mama, why are we in Grandma’s bathroom? Why’d you put me in here? What are we doing?”. D’aaw…
Gloves still on, I try to put Dante into the bathtub and…we learn immediately that doesn’t work. Dante finally catches on to what we’re in the bathroom for, jumps out the bathtub with a face that says “Fuck no!” and runs straight to the door.
I try to comfort Dante and call him back to get into the bathtub and I am met with hisses and growls. Okay. Option two, plan b comes into play:
The measuring cup!
My measuring cup is already filled with warm water and just a little bit of Dawn dish soap. I pour it over Dante’s body and Dante hisses and growls, “Lady, you best never do that to me again and stay the hell away from me with that measuring cup!”. Dante tries to run away from me, but he only comes deeper into the bathroom and I can easily catch him with the measuring cup. My poor baby was just a miserable lil’ thing.
So it was literally me just chasing my cat all around the bathroom with the measuring cup full of warm, soapy water and trying to bathe him. Like, ya’ll. My mom’s bathroom became Dante’s entire bathtub.
Lemme repeat that: My mom’s bathroom became Dante’s entire bathtub.
There wasn’t any way in hell I could get Dante to stay in the actual bathtub, so I picked my battles. Yes, I did. I picked my battles.
And my poor baby boy was just trying everything in his power to get away from me and my dreaded measuring cup-full-of-warm-Dawn-dishwater. Lawdeh, my poor baby. He jumped onto and from the sink, tried to hide in the shadows behind the toilet (but he’s a white boy with big ass blue eyes, so I could see him perfectly), he tried to push through the door as though it would open, and he clawed at the walls and doors. Most of our dialogue went something like this:
Dante: “Hiss! Spit! Claw!!”
Me: “Dante! Please come back here! If you’d just stayed in the bath tub in the first place, we would’ve been done with this shit over thirty minutes ago!”
Dante: “Growl! Whine! Deeper growl!”
Me: “Young man! Stay still, dammit and watch that tone of yours towards your mama!”
Dante: “Whines again and tries to open the door!”
Me: “Dante, just stay still! Lemme get your head real quick and-gah! Now you got both of us drenched!”
Dante: “Could give two shits and runs to the other end of the bathroom, near the bathtub. Whines!”
Me: “Dante, please! For the love of catnip and kitty litter, stay your white boy ass still!”
Dante: “Growls the song of Satan!”
I swear, it was both one of the most hilarious and terrifying times of my life as a cat owner. I’m telling ya’ll.
My poor wittle Dante looked like a drowned meerkat and was just as miserable. When I was all done, I tried to come at him with the nice, warm fluffy towel to dry him off and hold him. But he must’ve thought that I meant to entrap him because he hissed something awful at me and the towel. That hiss translated into, “Mama, fuck you, that towel and this entire bathroom! I’m gone!”. And wittle Dante promptly ran out of the bathroom (I’d opened the door by now) and into the living room, where he left wet spots all over the coffee table, couch and chairs.
I spent the rest of that night cleaning up house. My mama’s bathroom was utterly destroyed. And outside of that, I cleaned up all the places where Dante rested and/or played to ensure that as many of those fleas as possible were gone.
And through it all, Dante barely let me brush him. I still got some cuddles in the morning, though. So I was forgiven.
Unfortunately, since I only scrubbed at Dante with my gloves on, I didn’t get all of the fleas with a good bathing. So I had to try again with bare hands the day after the next. Ugh. I wanted those little pesky pest motherfuckers off my baby!!!!
I was pretty scared because Dante is fuckin’ highly intelligent and strong-willed as hell…and I was going in there to bathe him with bare hands.
Eeek.
I didn’t want to get my hands all scratched up, but dammit, I had to try and bathe my baby boy again. Had to take care of my wittle Dante.
So I did try. Pretty much same deal, same material. Except this time? I didn’t bother a whit with filling up my mama’s bathtub and I laid towels on just about every single square foot of floor in my mama’s bathroom.
Ya’ll see where this was going.
Yep. It is true: I wholeheartedly learned my lesson and Dante and I were just gon’ wing it by once again turning my mama’s bathroom into his bathtub.
I was wearing my thick Southpole jacket again but, this time, I decided to go barehanded. I needed to get my nails deep into Dante’s fur, to his skin to get rid of these bastards. But I still didn’t want Dante to scratch my skin up.
I was really, really scared this time.
Dante caught on immediately to what was going on. Therefore, as soon as I put him down, he whined and went to claw at the door. And off we started with the measuring cup, this time only full of warm water.
There was, predictably, more hissing and spitting and whining and growling. But what surprised the living hell out of me? When I got my hands wet and lathered with Dawn dish soap and went to lather Dante’s fur with my bare hands? And, mind you, I did this while he was making his displeasure known?
He let me.
Even as he was growling and snarling and hissing…he still let me touch him. It was just the water that he didn’t like, the water that was making him miserable. Hell, I could even get in there and scrub under his chin and on his belly. I was actually allowed to scrub under his chin even as he was growling up a storm. He’d even stay still and lie down for me. Guess shit really does count when you’re the mama of a cat, huh?
I think, that time around, the biggest difference was how I used my voice. During the first time, I was partially amused and mostly terrified, so I kept laughing. I think my laughter really spooked the shit out of Dante. But the second time, I just kept my voice low and soothing, assuring Dante that we were almost done, I didn’t like this anymore than he did and if he’d just hold still for one more moment, I’d be able to get whatever part I was working on at the time. Yep, yep, yep. Dante was a hell of a lot more cooperative than I thought he would be.
Oh, and yes, the floor was completely soaked even with the towels. In that way, neither one of us could win. But we tried. I promise ya’ll, we tried.
So I did manage to get in there after all and just scrub, scrub, scrub my baby’s fur and skin to cleanliness! And goodness gracious…that white boy has some healthy ass pink skin, I tell ya’ll. Healthy ass pink skin under all that fur.
I got as many of the fucking fleas as I could, sometimes even pinching them and running them under the sink’s faucet. Sons of bitches needed to get off my baby.
Just about everything was going dandy until it was finally time to rinse Dante off. Ohhh, I got that measuring cup in my hand and wittle Dante got up and ran to that door again. Lawdeh. At that point, it didn’t matter how low and soothing I kept my voice, Dante does. Not. Like. That. Measuring. Cup. At. All. The floor got even wetter and then it all really went to hell when…
…Dante jumped into the little dresser’s cubby hole where my mama keeps her undergarments and huddled there in an effort to get away from the water.
Like…seriously. This dripping wet cat that probably still has some fleas on him leapt onto my mama’s undergarments. Poor Dante was just that traumatized.
I cannot make this shit up.
So in addition to all the other shit I had to clean up after releasing Dante to dry paradise, I had to just go ahead and wash all those undergarments because I wasn’t taking a chance. And even if there were no fleas that jumped on them, well…I didn’t want my mama’s bras and panties to be all damp when she came in from work that morning. Plus, it was the least I could do for Dante and I destroying her bathroom for the second time in just one week.
In the end?
Wittle Dante was bathed well and that white boy’s fur was nice and soft and fragrant as hell. We gave him his Capstar pill (put it in his food) too. Unfortunately, I don’t think all the fucking fleas are gone, but he hasn’t been scratching all that much. So…maybe it was a success? If not, we’ll be trying something else.
So yeah! That is the Cat Bathing Chronicles! Please do share any of your Cat Bathing Chronicles stories in the comments, lovelies!
no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 12:40 am (UTC)Option two might be using a box with holes in it or something like that to keep Dante contained while he gets watered, maybe?
no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 01:30 am (UTC)And you know, mom suggested I just use Dante's carrier to get him as still as I can while bathing him. His carrier is, of course, portable and has a hell lot of wholes in it. But...the problem is how do I reach my hands in there to actually bathe him? Like...my fingers can't fit through the holes and even if they could, how would I be able to get a good scrubbing in? :O
no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 02:50 am (UTC)Something with a block-like shape! You, my friend, are simply a genius! :D
no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 05:08 am (UTC)When I first took in Max (he's the one sniffing the Panda Express cup in the pics I posted), he had some digestive issues and kept having diarrhea. Which meant trying to bathe his back feet, as he'd step in it trying to bury it. He did not approve, at all.
We were both very glad when his stomach settled down and he stopped having diarrhea. No more trying to hold his feet in the sink and wash them before he escaped over my shoulder!
(I suppose the problem was probably his digestive system adjusting to normal cat food after whatever it was he was living on when he was a stray.)
start me talking about cats...
Date: 2015-06-30 08:54 am (UTC)When he was frightened and unhappy and you were laughing, he probably thought his nice mama had turned into a cackling sadist who wanted to sacrifice him to the dish soap demons. But he was calmed by your soothing voice on the second try, so he really has a strong trust in you that you're not trying to hurt him. And if he lets you cuddle him again soon afterwards, he forgives you for it! My partner's mother had a fluffy white cat who got herself dirty and had to be bathed often, and every time she would refuse to be friendly for days afterwards and hide under the furniture when anyone came towards her.
I have never had to bathe any of my adult cats, but when I was fostering kittens for the SPCA there were a couple that needed washing. We used to shut the kittens in the bathroom overnight, where they couldn't get themselves lost or forget where their litter tray was (they got playtime and socialisation in the daytime). Usually when they got big and strong enough to jump into the bath from the outside, they were also big enough to jump out again. But one of them, little Minerva, once jumped into the bath in the night when she was pretty small, and then she had a wee in the bath and got her paws all wet, and she was too small and her feet were all slippery so she couldn't get out. She got wet all over and when we came in next morning, her fur was smelly and wet to the skin and she was very cold from sleeping in a puddle. She looked so sad! We had to give her a warm bath, and although she didn't enjoy it very much she did like being warm and snuggled up in a towel to get dry.
We used theme names for each litter of kittens and those ones had Harry Potter names. Minerva was a tabby with black markings around her eyes, like Minerva McGonnagle. Her siblings were Kingsley, who was calm with a great air of dignity for a baby fluffball, and Luna, who had wide, slightly crazed eyes and was always doing something unexpected.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-30 03:33 pm (UTC)Cat trust is a lovely thing. <3 Good kitty.
Miss Muffin stuck her tiny cream-colored paw in black paint when she was a kitten. Got it all over her pads, and of course it was pretty runny so it soaked up her toes, too. It's theoretically water-soluble, so I took her in and washed her little foot in warm water.
You'd have thought she was being grievously harmed, the way she wriggled and carried on, and of course the paint did not come out. We had to wait for it to wear off.
At least I was pretty sure if it wasn't going to come out with me scrubbing it (and her flipping around like a fish on a line) that it wouldn't come out either with her licking it.