Meire Marion's Corner...: Cookie’s Bath

People usually believe that cats do not like water. Perhaps that is true about some cats, but Cookie, my 10-year-old Persian cat, really likes water. Ok, she does not appreciate being squirted in the face, but she likes to walk around in puddles left by the rain on the balcony or the water leftover in the shower stall. As a matter of fact, that’s where she gets her drinking water every morning after my morning shower. Sometimes she even asks me to open the shower tab and let the water run so that she can take a sip. Being that she has a long fur coat; it is very common for it to get all tangled up due to the knots from not combing. She does not like to be combed. Therefore, once a year I have her coat trimmed at the pet shop. It is not an easy task and I have to help out by holding her or just petting her to make her less stressed.

These past couple of days the temperatures here in Brazil have been in the mid 30s C but feels like 40. So I thought that it would be nice and refreshing to get Cookie’s coat trimmed so that she wouldn’t feel the extra heat from all the fur. You see, I usually have her trimmed in July when it is winter here and then she spends the cold days under the covers. Hence it makes much more sense to have her coat trimmed in the summer. It is embarrassing that I hadn’t thought about it before. As a matter of fact, I never thought that I would have to have her taken to the pet shop for trimming until a couple of years ago when her fur was really knotted up.

Yesterday was her trim and wash day. What an adventure that was. Since she enjoys water, the bath was fine and I could even get some snapshots. She looked like a Gremlin ( 1984 Steven Spielberg movie ). Everything was going well until the pet shop attendant turned on the dryer, I mean the super duper dryer that resembles the noise a vacuum cleaner makes. Cookie went wild and started scratching everything in sight and everyone, me included. Cat scratches are like paper cuts; they really hurt. After a few minutes there was blood coming out of the pet shop attendants fingers. All I could think of was the pain she must have been feeling. However, she didn’t complain.

After the bath, the blow drying and the ride home, Cookie was happy at home with less hair to lick. How do I know? She purred and purred and purred.