As you can imagine, cat and bath are two words that indubitably do not belong together. Cats HATE water. Almost as much I hate cats. I have my reasons for hating cats. They may not be good ones, but it comes down to I simply don’t trust them. At all. Cats look at me like they know that too.
I’ve owned cats before. I remember distinctly one black cat. A stray kitten that we picked up somewhere in Laramie that we named Boo. Yeah. That turned out to be a very fitting name. One evening, while I’m home alone with the kids, Boo starts running up the walls and flying off like a bat. He just lost it. His eyes were glazed over and he kept running up the walls and backflipping and running up another wall. I grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch, threw it over the cat, scooped it up like a bag and launched him out the back door. I never saw Boo again.
And then there is that dire superstition about black cats crossing your path. What happens when you’re driving home from work and a black cat runs in front of your car and you accidentally, and I clearly did not mean for it to happen, run over it? You hear the telltale thump, thump and you realize that you have just turned the black cat that crossed your path into road kill. I didn’t stop to look. Two thumps was a clear indication that the cat didn’t make it. It was going to be bad enough that the cat crossed my path, but now I’d killed it. What misfortune was I facing now? I drove home hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t have a fatal accident four blocks from the house. Thinking back on it now, it could explain a lot of things that have happened to me over the last 50 years.
But my youngest daughter likes cats and her cat had a flea. I say “a flea” because she claims that she saw the flea on Leroy’s nose clearing thumbing it’s nose at her while the cat was sitting next to her on the couch. This meant war. Being who she is, this positive identification of a flea required immediate action.
And in to action she sprang. Purchasing the all important flea shampoo, flea powder, flea collar, and other flea eradication paraphernalia, she set out to insure that her apartment and Leroy where flea free.
She put the cat in the back bedroom and started dusting the apartment with the flea powder. A white cloud of said powder started rising around the room and she panicked when she saw the cloud forming above the fish tank. Running for a towel she covered the fish tank and hoped for the best, quickly scanning the label precautions for dangers to exotic fish. With the apartment visibility down to a few feet, she removed everything from the bathroom in anticipation of the shit storm that was going to take place when the cat was submerged in the water for the all important shampoo treatment.
She put a few inches of water in the tub, and went to get Leroy. In case you didn’t know, cats are not dumb. Within a few seconds of being in the bathroom with the door closed, Leroy knew good things were not going to happen. Now I believe that she was wearing some protective clothing, but mentioned she could not find the latex gloves that she wanted to go up her arms which she probably would have duct-taped to secure. In her haste to eradicate the flea, she didn’t want to waste time stopping at another store.
Finally securing the cat who was, yep, bouncing off the walls, she submerged him in the tub. The thrashing cat turned the bath water into a spectacular water feature not unlike the fountains at the Belaggio in Las Vegas, and drenched, well, everything. Holding the cat with one hand, she grabs the shampoo and squeezes the bottle. Nothing happens. She realizes she has left the protective seal under the cap, and has to let go of the cat. He’s outta there. Catching the cat for re-insertion into the bath was not an easy task.
This is Leroy post bath. I’m assuming the flea is dead. I don’t see anything on his nose. That flea won’t be thumbing his nose at Leroy’s owner any time soon anyway. The girl may be petrified of spiders, but she ain’t afraid of no fleas.
WTF...What The Fluffy 