as small as a world and as large as alone

2:30pm July 15, 2013

feliscorvus:

youneedacat:

slepaulica:

youneedacat:

karalianne:

josiahd:

karalianne:

josiahd:

lord-kitschener:

mintmayhem:

 THE ONE IN THE WHITE TOWEL THOUGH

It’s a box full of purritos

Why are those kittens wrapped in towels?

Hazarding a guess: they were all just given a bath. (Based on water on the edge of the tub they’re in.)

Why would that mean they’d have to be wrapped in towels?

To dry them off and not have to worry about the rest of the house, I expect.

That’s all I’ve got on this one. I don’t think cats need baths unless they’re ill or otherwise unable to clean themselves properly, so I don’t quite get it anyway.

Sometimes they manage to get themselves really filthy though. Fey used to climb inside dumpsters and root around in there. She always got an instant bath when she got home. No way a cat can clean that off themselves.

Also, bathing cats helps people with asthma and allergies because it removes some of the dander that flakes of on their fur.

It can also help with temperature regulation on really hot days. And some cats like it. I have a cat who jumps hopefully into the bathtub several times a day, and will spend a long time playing happily in the water before he decides he’s done and jumps out. He doesn’t like it deeper than a few centimetres, but it’s his favourite thing to do.

Oh also sometimes you have to towel wrap cats to keep them from testing you to shreds while giving them medications or other treatments.

Cats generally don’t need regular bathing (unless they have certain skin conditions, etc.) but every so often I’ve had to bathe mine due to:

- Fleas (when they were kittens too small for flea meds),

- Poop Issues (one of my guys had an undiagnosed food intolerance as a kitten; until I figured out that corn made him sick, I ended up needing to wash his back legs in the sink a bunch of times.)

- Fur control (another of my cats is a champion shedder, and her hair is really coarse and will irritate her digestive system badly if she swallows too much of it while grooming. Bathing-then-thoroughly-brushing her is the only way to get a load of hair off her in one go.)

That said, there really and truly isn’t any “generic" cat-bathing method. It depends on the individual cat. But the one thing I’ve invariably found helps a lot, if you can logistically manage it, is to fill a large pitcher or two with warm water before even getting the cat near the sink or tub. Most cats I’ve met get very startled and upset by the noise of the faucet. Rinsing them with a slow, silent pour of water tends to go over better with most of them. 

Oh and I’ve also had good luck with “washcloth baths" (basically like sponge-baths for kitties). No pouring or immersion required; you just start with a washcloth lathered with cat shampoo, work that into their fur, and then “rinse" using plain water on another washcloth until you stop seeing bubbles or smelling shampoo. My boycats actually seem to enjoy this method…I’m guessing it probably feels more like natural cat-grooming than any other washing technique. They usually flop around and purr during the “rinse cycle". (My girlcats, meanwhile, tend to get impatient; they’re both very “I’ve got my own agenda and this nonsense is interfering with it" when it comes to such things).

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