Ancient kitty water torture

Chris and I just gave Vinny a bath. Huh, funny how that sentence makes the event sound so simple. It's like saying, we gave Vinny some treats, or we gave Vinny a nice scritch behind the ears. I mean, have you ever bathed a cat? I grew up with dogs, and washing a dog is easy, fun even. The only thing you really have to watch out for is when the dog winds up for that full body shake, starting with the slow flopping of the ears and ending with the frantic tail wiggle. Cats, on the other hand, have claws. And teeth. And they're the spawn of the Devil.

This is the third time for the Vin. The first time was actually okay, and I now attribute that to a generous dose of Dr. Bach's Rescue Remedy. At the time, I thought we had just lucked out in the kitty lottery. The second time, lulled into a false sense of security, we somehow forgot the Rescue Remedy. How does one forget the single ingredient that turns a furry, fanged creature of death back into a simply unhappy cat?! For whatever reason, we forgot and that nearly put us off cat-bathing for good. He turned into a sopping wet, yowling whirligig of razor sharp teeth and claws. The fur was literally flying. I was afraid the neighbors would report us to the animal equivalent of Child Protective Services, his aggrieved howling was so loud.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when Chris looked at me with horror and fear when I suggested we give Vinny a bath today. That day was traumatic for all of us. But there was no denying the kitty was getting a mite rank. While it's true that cats are self-cleaning, it's also true that they clean themselves with their tongues. The same tongues they lick their butts with and that live in the rotten fish-smelling caverns called their mouths. Really, a cat can only get so clean on its own. And we're taking him down to L.A. for the weekend, where he'll be meeting my family and his cat-cousin, Ginger, for the first time, so I wanted him to make a good impression.

We oh-so-casually set the stage. We quietly hid all the bath mats and toilet paper (so they wouldn't get soaked), laid a towel in the bottom of the tub (for the cat to grip onto), gave him an extra-large dose of Rescue Remedy (the cat, I mean, though Chris could've used some, too), and changed into our suits of chain-mail armor. Chris snagged the cat, plopped him in the tub and held on for dear life as I soaked and soaped him. And lo, Rescue Remedy really is the key--it wasn't bad at all. Oh, Vinny squirmed and twisted all right, even yowled a few times, but it all seemed half-hearted and the whole event passed with nary a scratch, though Chris and I were both pretty soaked. He even put up with the post-bath toweling, but we decided that using the blow dryer on him was really pushing our luck.

So now, Vinny's stalking around the house, busy with the chore of getting all his fur back in order and picking up the pieces of this shattered pride. Moral of the story? If you need to wash your cat, don't forget the Rescue Remedy. And be thankful that cats have pea-sized brains. They won't hate you forever.