How To Bathe Your Cat

Great! Thanks for that. It's just what I needed. Now I have to rush off and, eek, collect the cat.

Bob

No offence, but I find nothing about cats humorous or even interesting. I can never understand how otherwise rational even highly intelligent people convince themselves they have a pet in cats when they obviously have an unwillingly and mostly temporary domestic wild animal. Give me a dog that eats the food I don't like under the table any day.

Give me a dog that eats the food I don't like under the table any day.

Cats are even better. They'll eat food you do like under the table any day.

Bob

...unwillingly and mostly temporary domestic wild animal...Posted by: B80vin

I'm not sure that cats are unwilling; if we do what they want they seem to be willing to let us share the same abode. Around the compound we have a lot of semi-domesticated cats, they are friendly but a little afraid of humans and they take a while to accept you.

Big dogs are OK, it is the small yappy ones I don't like.

...unwillingly and mostly temporary domestic wild animal...Posted by: B80vin

I just read recently about a study that said that cats were not unwilling at all. They sort of chose to be domesticated.

http://themoderatevoice.com/general/13784/cats-ancestors-came-to-people…

I believe it was Churchill who commented, "Dogs look up to us, cats look down at us. Only a pig can look us right in the eye..." ;-)

Seriously, my kitty is pretty dang domestic! She comes to the table for treats, usually politely. She's also very affectionate and will make friends with anyone.

Yeah, you're not describing my cat at all. He's a great big old attention-sponge, loves people, and is about as wild as a thoroughly domesticated thing. (He used to be a stray and didn't do very well at it; he almost starved to death.)

I also have no trouble bathing the lug, either. I set him in the tub and "skritch" the shampoo into his fur. Sometimes he even obliges me by flopping over into the water because he blisses out. As long as I keep skritching, he's more than happy to keep standing in the water. (Then again, this is the cat whose idea of drinking from the toilet is to put his two front feet at the bottom of the bowl, so YMMV.)

I have no trouble bathing my cat, either - and this is the cat that the vet's staff call "the evil one." (You thought it was Voldemort? Ha. I have way more scars than Harry). Anyway, I suspect the bathing-the-cat meme is a myth.

And the reason I have a cat and not a dog is that I don't want a "pet." I want a highly unpredictable, independent reminder of primitive, savage nature. Like, duh.