Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Oct. 8, 2012

How to bathe a cat

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There will be some of you out there who will not want to read this because you have not the slightest interest in bathing cats. I certainly understand that. But medical professionals know full well that 92 percent of first time hospital emergency room admissions involve people who were trying to bathe a cat. Cats do not enjoy being bathed unless there is a tongue involved, and they prefer it to be their own. So trying to bathe a cat in a 50 gallon galvanized tub using a wire brush or a Brillo pad can be hazardous to your health. Rest easy, cat lovers. I am not recommending that method.

What you need to realize, however, is that cats have an IQ of just marginally higher than zero when measured on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. A cat will saunter out onto your deck, seat himself, proudly assume the official cat position where one hind leg is pointed heavenward, revealing his most personal parts, and then start the tongue bath. When he has finally done the job to his satisfaction, he will strut back and forth, with his tail standing straight up like a flagpole so that his owners will notice just how bright and shiny his exhaust pipe looks now. While your average dog is intelligent enough to gratefully allow his master to put him in a tub of warm water and bathe him, your average cat finds this threatening. He may have known you for fourteen or fifteen years, but his tiny brain still tells him that this time you are in league with Satan and plan to drown him.

So your average cat prefers to do the bathing himself, and then cough up fur balls for a month. If you have three family members, and one of them is a dog, your family's average IQ will still be somewhere around 80, which means your family is functional. If, however, you add a fourth member to your family, and that member is a cat, your family's IQ will plummet to about 6. That is because cats aren't just stupid, they tend to make their owners stupid, too. (Case in point: Cat spits up fur balls, owner dutifully cleans up fur balls. Over the years I've picked up enough cat fur balls to fill the Georgia Dome.)

But I know there are still some brave folks out there who love the challenge of bathing cats. They are the kind of people who attach crawdads to their nipples and walk barefoot across hot coals and play “catch the porcupine.” There's no rational reason to do any of those things, except to be able to say that you've done them.

For those brave few, I would recommend an October 1 article in the New Zealand Herald, a fine newspaper which will tell you way more than you ever wanted to know about New Zealand. This article tells about a Gisbourne lady named Adele Law who came up with a new way to bathe her cat, Possum. Adele loaded half a load of clothes into her washer, then decided to take a shower. Afterward she finished loading the washer, put in the required amount of detergent, dropped the lid and set the timer. She noticed some squealing coming from the machine, but assumed it was only bad plumbing, or possibly bearings or something, so she dried her hair and took one of her sons to work. Upon returning home she again heard the squealing coming from her washer. It was not running, having completed its 55-minute cycle. You guessed it, when she opened the lid, there was her kitty, stuck up against the side of the drum. As Mrs. Law put it: “... she looked like a rat, twisted and flattened.” Probably due to that final spin cycle.

So Mrs. Law removed the cat and took it to the vet. The vet had never seen a cat survive an entire 55-minutes in a washer, but he figured that since Mrs. Law ran that load on cold water, and since there were lots of clothes in that particular load, and no agitator in the machine (unless you count the cat), the cat had beaten the odds. Mrs. Law surmised that perhaps after she'd put in that partial load and gone to take a shower, the dog had encouraged the cat to get in the washer. Dogs are smart enough to avoid washing machines, but Possum was only a cat, and you know cats. I saw a nice photo of Mrs. Law's 7-year-old son, Tate, holding the cat after it returned from the vet's. It was gray and fluffy, with large eyes and a very surprised look on its face. I don't know what the vet did for it, but from the looks of Possum I would guess he had a clothes dryer around the office, somewhere.

So here's what we've learned about cat bathing from the New Zealand story:


• First, place half a load of dirty clothes in washer.

• Add catnip.

• Load cat.

• Finish loading clothes, distributing them evenly.

• Add detergent, and possibly bleach, depending on the breed of cat and color of clothes.

• Set timer, and set water temperature for “cold.”

• Adjust ear plugs.

• Return after 55 minutes and extract clothes and cat.

• Throw clothes away, wring out cat.

• Place cat in dryer and set for “light fluff.” Add dryer sheets to eliminate static cling. Twenty minutes should suffice.

• Remember to wear heavy work gloves and hockey mask when removing cat from dryer.

• Clean lint filter thoroughly.

• Put cat outside and allow it to climb to the top of the nearest pine tree. After several days of complaining, it will come down. If you leave the ear plugs in, the squealing will not bother you.

• Fold cat and place in dresser drawer.


I hope this has been helpful. By the way, if you are one of those peculiar people who still uses an old-fashioned wringer washer and a clothesline, you may want to take kitty to the laundromat.