Have you ever bathed your cat? I did it!

Well, I bathed him in the laundry room sink and we are both fine. I filled the sink with about 4 inches of warm water, put a heavy rubber doormat with those little rubber fingers that stand up to catch the dirt off shoes on the bottom of the sink to give him something to grasp, and just gently stood him in there, talking to him all the while. I was able to do a terrific bath and rinse him fully. It was awkward to move the mat aside to pull the sink plug to let the dirty water start draining before I turned the faucet on and used the wand thing to go over him to give him a thorough rinsing. He is a gentle old man, and other than expressing his upset verbally, he didn’t hiss or try to scratch me once!

He did seem to like the warm water from the wand and I used it in a petting motion on him. He stopped crying when I started that. I had a large thick bath towel ready and wrapped him up in that and we just walked around a bit, me talking and him just content to be held. When the towel (and my shirt) had soaked the bulk of the water off, I sat him on this new sisal scratching mat that I had just velcrowed onto the countertop earlier in the day and used a couple of microfiber towels on him to get off any remaining water.

I had forgotten to plug my dryer in, so I had to let him go while I set that up and he didn’t jump off the counter at all. My hair dryer is mounted on a stand so that I can use both hands to work on my hair, or the dog, and now the cat. I wonder if he is now deaf too because when I turned it on, he came over to me because he saw me pick up the soft brush I always brush him with. He just sat on the sisal mat and let me brush him with the warm air blowing on him and purred up a storm. Typically when I pick that brush up, all three cats swarm all over me, gently pushing each other out of the way to get under the brush movements. This time, the other two cats just sat on top of the washer and dryer and watched the show. I think they were nervous that they might be next for the sink.

So it was a very successful bath experience for us both, and I think I will make it a regular thing when he starts looking grubby again. I did notice that the other male cat was grooming him later in the evening. The two males get along very well and the female, the sibling to the cat that I bathed, gets along very well with him too, but the female does not take to the second male and never has. The new male is younger and likes to play, and she likes to play with strings and hanging toys too, but she gets upset if he butts into her play time. I have to separate them to have play time with each of them. The male that I bathed, Mr. Tucker, no longer likes to chase string toys. He does like to bite the toy off the string, so I have had to switch out all the strings with a metal fishing leader so that he can’t bite them off.

He can have a new toy/string separated in less than a minute if he gets to it before I remove the string and put the fishing leader on. I have to be very careful with any string-like objects anywhere in the house because I’m afraid he will swallow them. I have had to tackle him and dig many strings out of his mouth and part of the way down his throat over his 16 years. And I have to tie up the string from any window blind or he will chew those off too. He ruined the wood blinds that I had just had installed in my bedroom window years ago before I realized he would go after it. I opened the blind and left the room for a few minutes, and when I returned, there he was, sitting on the skinny little window ledge munching away on the remains of the string pulls. I am pretty sure he did swallow some of that while I was out of the room because it looked a lot shorter when I got it away from him.

So, successful bath, and I am going to start using some of the suggestions to give him a daily wipe down with a damp cloth and will check out the suggested products. Maybe if I keep up with daily wipe downs, his fur won’t need a sink bath again. Oh, and after he was nice and dry, I was washing the fur out of the brush when the other male came up to me for his brushing. The brush was still damp, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. Same with the little female. And the damp brush seemed to remove more loose fur than when it is dry, so I am going to start using it damp on them now. I can’t stand finding hacked up furballs, and have to get to them before the dog does or he will eat them. So gross. Regular brushing helps to cut down on those so maybe damp brushing and damp fine-toothed combing will eliminate them all together.

I truly love my kitties.  But not that much!