#bathing cats

I have discovered an easier way to bathe the cats. Hey, he inserted himself into the situation. 🤷🏼‍♀️

But dear god I’m scared of her when we need to hold her down.

I don’t understand how a tiny, 3 kilo cat is able to be so strong.

True fear is when you have her burrito’d so you can shove worming paste down her throat and you can feel the towel unwrapping.

We just had to give all the animals a bath (to combat fleas) and Elric is pretty bad. He’s 4 kilos and extra long, but besides trying to pull himself out of the tub, he’s mostly fine.

But Mumei. Dear Jesus’ stand Mumei is a devil.

I had to get someone to hold her legs together as I tried to lather her up with one hand as my other was holding her scruff so tightly I’m surprised she didn’t choke.

Even as bound up as she was, some how she still managed to get out of the tub multiple times.

It’s a goddamn miracle that nobody was scratched. She literally tried to bite the taps in her struggle out of the water.

Have you ever had to consecutively bathe 3 cats?

We have, but when the kitties were tiny... not as the giant tiger-size they are today.

It would have been fine except that the last one thinks that the tub is his very own execution chamber. My ears are still ringing, and he gave S some good scratches, despite his freshly-clipped claws.

I thought they’d all hate me for a while, but we acted preemptively. Treats immediately afterwards has prompted quick forgiveness. Miho even gave me that little “brrrrrt” sound!

It was cold so they had to forgive me for the bath or freeze, sorry babies <3

So, we have four cats at our house, but they’re all exclusively indoor cats and (up until recently) they were all very good groomers, so we’ve almost never given any of them baths. They were never visibly dirty and never had any odor, so we never worried about giving them baths, a few isolated incidents aside.

However, one of our cats – Velvet (in the pictures above) – will be sixteen years old next month. She’s overweight and has arthritis, may be developing diabetes, and yesterday she had some bleeding as the result of what seems to be an infection in her intestines. She’s generally in kind of rough shape, but she’s an old lady, so all the medical stuff is kind of expected.

Here’s the problem – with all her health problems, her grooming habits have gotten really bad. We’re used to grooming mats out of our longhair cat, but Velvet is a shorthair and still manages to get mats in her fur. It’s slightly sticky to the touch along her back, where she can’t reach to lick herself because of the weight and arthritis. And she’s starting to get noticeably stinky. (The vet seems to think that the smell is not a symptom of any illness, but is a result of her poor grooming.)