Cat bath!

All three of our cats are normally very fastidious with their bathroom habits. Loki and Neko never ever go outside the litterbox. However, Martini is a little pickier and she does not like using a box that one of the other two cats has recently used… and if it’s not to her liking, she poops on the rug instead.

This is a little irritating but totally manageable. Poop is easy to pick up and get rid of, and a spritz of Lysol and a light scrub brushing over the area takes care of the problem.

Pee, however, is another story.

Only once before has Martini ever peed outside the litterbox, and that was about eight years ago when we switched the cat litter to the crystal style granules — which we loved but the cats hated, and Martini let us know in no uncertain terms by squatting on the rug next to the box while I was scooping it out and peeing right in front of me. Yes ma’am, message received, we’re switching back to clay litter.

A few nights ago she decided again that she didn’t want to use the litterbox that one of her siblings had recently used, but this time instead of just pooping on the rug, she peed on a piece of plastic sheeting that we had accidentally left lying on the rug.

Cardinal rule #1 for cat owners: Don’t ever leave plastic sheeting lying around; it is an irrestistible cat pee magnet.

Oopsie.

Luckily for us, the pee was contained within a little pool on the plastic and did not make its way to the rug. We were actually downstairs watching television at the time this happened, and only discovered it when Martini waltzed by and we caught the distinct odor of cat pee. It was all over her; splashback, I guess.

So she got a bath! The first one in her whole life. She was surprisingly relaxed throughout the whole thing, probably because she had no idea what was going on or why in the world we would dip her into a sink full of water. Shock makes one complacent. We got her all soaped up with lavender shampoo, rinsed and towel dried, and she was as good as new. No grudges, and no reoccurences of The Incident. So far, anyway.

I wish I’d thought to take a picture of her with her back half all wet and skinny, but I just didn’t think about it in time.

Hopefully now she equates “pee on the rug” with “get a bath” in her mind.

I should probably also mention here that I had a summer job one year in high school at a pet grooming shop, washing cats. I guess they put the newest and youngest employees on cat-washing duty. I still have scars, both physical and mental. Whenever the subject of “worst job you’ve ever had” comes up, that one is usually the winner.