03.14.00
Soaking Simone
Mar 14 Tue (12 AM)
Simone is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She gives us serious reason to believe that she incurred some sort of brain damage at birth. Perhaps it was simply her lack of a mother that brought her to be like this, but she lacks some basic abilities. For one, she has an insatiable appetite. This has led her to acquire a full double wide body, plus a porch and a carport.
In this state she has difficulty getting around the house, much less getting all the way around her butt to clean herself properly. So every couple of weeks or so I take her into the bathroom, run the tub with some warmer-than-lukewarm water and prepare.
Preparation is the key to a successful Simone Soak. Clearing the area around the tub itself is a necessary, if obvious, safety step. Dressing the part means donning old clothes. A Kevlar body suit would be great but for most of us it’s a luxury. I go with the old jeans and older t-shirt routine which, though lacking in personal protection, brings the personal monetary outlay closer to my tax bracket. Now that the suit and the environment are up to snuff, it’s time for the tools.
Starting from the top it’s important to have a wash rag. This should be of properly aged material anything from the 80’s will do… except for the parachute pants. A brush will help get rid of those shedding hairs that we’re hoping to preempt as well. Soft bristles will do just fine, and likely save us a few planting rows dug into our arms from a cat that feels under attack.
A soaping agent is something I’m still in the hunt for. Most pet stores love to advertise their flea and tick removal chemical bombs, but the ‘I can’t believe she’s not itching’ products seem to be few and far between. Obvious substitute number one is regular human shampoo, but ah-ah-ah!
Humans don’t often lick their scalp. (Send a photo if you can prove me wrong.) However cats are much more likely to take part in their own outer covering and I’d rather not have Simone slurping down any amount of Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine or more than the RDA of Ammonium Laureth Sulfate. So for now I’m going with pure elbow grease and Clorox bleach.
Okay, I admit it, I’m kidding about the elbow grease.
The final tool that should be at the ready is the towel. I recommend grabbing a towel that is already about to be washed. No sense in getting cat hair on a clean towel, right? This towel needs to be at the ready for two reasons: A) to dry the cat and B) to cover the bloody stumps that your hands will turn into before you actually reach the emergency room. (In fact, why don’t you call 911 now so they can get a good head start. Trust me, they’ll understand.)
So I’ve got the room, the rag, the brush, the tub and the the towel at the ready. Now to add the active agent. (Seems like I’d be safer giving the toaster a bath.)
My first and subsequent baths were rather anticlimactic compared to what I had been told to expect. I had the warm water running into an unplugged tub, creating just a small puddle at one end. I lowered her into the back of the tub with a forklift, taking care to keep a firm hand on the top of her body. In this position she can’t directly claw nor bite my hand. At least not since she stopped taking those yoga lessons.
She merrroooowwwed a bit but didn’t attack, didn’t even hiss. I moved her down into the warm puddle of water and had her step hesitantly into it. She didn’t like it much and kept eyeing the side of the tub knowing that this was the way to freedom. Three or four times she lunged at it, once or twice getting far enough to her claws hooked over the edge kinda like one of those claws that secret agents use to hold the rope when they scale large office buildings in search of the secret codes that will allow the operatives to release the girl who will let them know where to find the underground lair that hides the guy who’s going to destroy the eastern seaboard for a world-wide secret organization that is bent on massing the resources necessary to fight off the aliens who find our planet ripe for colonization. Kinda like that.
After a bit of scrubbing with the wash rag, always making sure to brush along the grain of the fir, er, fur, she seems to relax. Don’t let it fool you. Her eyes are fully dilated and she’s just trying to lull me into complacency. She leaps again, but with little luck. By now I’ve placed the stopper in the drain and begun to let the tub fill.
Now Simone, having that possible brain damage, seems to forget that she’s supposed to be trying to escape and begins to examine the stream of water coming from the tap. I giggle as she quickly discovers yet again that running water is liquid in motion, fully prepared to run up any mammal’s nose. Then suddenly I realize that this display is a planned distraction and she’s at the other end of the tub making a jump for it. Not so dumb after all, but she’s still has the liftoff capacity of the average hunk of igneous rock. I catch her and return her to the previously scheduled program.
After a bit more scrubbing, she’s wet enough and I’ve scrubbed off enough loose hair that it’s time to drain the tub. Letting the stopper out and collecting some of the floating fur to send off to Gaultier for their fall line, I continue to dredge up some water into the rag and onto Simone’s shoulders, flanks, back and tail. Good enough I’d say.
And now comes the big finish of the tub routine: the Butt Wash. Remember that this is what I came for in the first place. Once the water has drained from the tub, I go in for the kill with the wash rag, scrubbing the appropriate final area, and dragging her tail first into the running water. She seems to lose focus not quite understanding what’s going on and is actually pretty easy to hold. A bout of scrubbing and rinsing later, it’s time to throw the wash rag into the corner and rinse out the tub in it’s entirety while still holding Simone in the free hand.
Then I turn off the water and let the tub drain completely. Grabbing the towel that still remains close at hand I bear down on Simone _while she’s still in the tub!_ That’s right, that’s one of the big secrets of getting this to work. Don’t bring her out of the tub until that towel has run over and over her and over again. Otherwise I run the risk of having a kind of water-based cluster bomb going off in the vicinity as her tail whips long streams of dripping bathwater on to every surface — horizontal, vertical, and inverted.
By now she’s mostly dry. I’m careful to focus on the area of the back that I originally held her with. As I now have the towel between me and the claws of doom, I have greater flexibility to hold her still. After a few minutes, her low growls grow as the fun has truly drained out of this 4 ticket carnival ride.
Now’s the time to let go and see if I’ve dried her off enough to keep me from needing to mop up the house. Not being one of the mopping kind, I tend to push heavily for more toweling. After letting the poor captive free, I grab the wash rag and rinse it out thoroughly and then dump both the towel and the wash rag into a plastic grocery bag, to be washed separately from the rest of the laundry.
Simone, who never holds a grudge (hard to do when you have no short term memory), crawls up in my lap a few minutes later as I settle in to write this up. She’s still in need of a good ironing, but seemingly content.