Should I give my cat a bath?

In My Humble Opinion
21

When you wash you cat, please don’t use Dawn dishwashing detergent. Unless they’ve crawled under your car or something equally greasey-gooey. Dawn will strip too much oil out of their coat and give them dry skin. Also don’t use people shampoo, even no-tears baby shampoo. The pH is wrong for cats (dogs too), and can also leads to skin problems. A pet specific shampoo would be better, and most of them rinse quicker, too. [Dawn is rippin’ good if your lovable pet gets skunked. Dawn and a cider vinegar rinse.]

The cat bag works really well. The first time. Getting 'em in the second time…well…not so much goodly.

At the vet clinic, we scruffed 'em (grabbed the little kitties by the back of the neck and held on for dear life) and washed 'em one-handed.
-scruff
-rinse down with sprayer
-suds up
-rinse down
-dry off (lots of towels- cats reeeeeaaally hated the cage driers)
-let go

If you get the fur-balls used to bath time young, it all goes much better.
And giving your cats a good brush-out helps between baths. A good gentle slicker brush does wonders, even for short-hairs. (A matted kitty is NOT a good thing. Cat spit ain’t Tide and it ain’t leave-in conditioner/de-tangler)

22

when my childhood cat started to get older (maybe around 12-13, he lived to be 18) he started to be really bothered by fleas. He would chew at his fur and eventually pull out great hunks. Quite awful. The vet gave us special anti-flea kitty shampoo to help him with the problem. We found that bathing Kitty was a 2-person task.

Person 1: holds cat beneath his front paws, firmly gripping torso (with both hands), with hind paws just barely touching down. And is equipped with heavy-duty gloves.

Person 2: wets cat with warm sprayer, quickly shampoos cat, rinses cat, and begins toweling process. (note that cat looks disgusted with the indiginities being heaped on him throughout process)

At an agreed-upon moment, person 1 releases cat, who promptly disapears to sulk.

23

I had an incredibly well thought out, particularily funny, post about how the experience of bathing my cat went last night. I wrote it up this morning and before I could submit it, the computer froze. I lost it.

So, instead of the good post I wanted to submit earlier today, you get this lame one instead. Sometimes that’s just the breaks of this board.

To all that responded: Thanks! I took bits of advice from each of your posts and came up with a master plan.

Basically, I opted for the quick and dirty strategy. Catch her while she’s sleeping, completely overpower her before she can wake and offer up her own defense, and get in and out of the bathroom before she knew what hit her.

The long and the short of it is that it worked. She knew I was up to something, but before she could react, I pounced. I snatched her from the couch and made a bee-line for the tub. I didn’t say a word or acted timid. I was in serious charge of the situation.

To say she was surprised is an understatement. She was barely awake and alert when her little paws hit the ceramic. By then I had already started spritzing her from neck to tail (Thanks for the advice to avoid getting her head wet), I sud’s her up with itty bitty kitty shampoo, and rinsed. All of this took place in under two minutes flat. Her only reaction was one, long, particularily loud, MMMMRRrrrWWWWWWwwwwwwwww. Kinda sad, actually.

But once the water hit her, as Magdeline so rightly pointed out, her will to live was gone. She stopped trying to scurry, fight, or even whimper. She had succumbed to the situation.

Her reward was a one big hunk of turkey I picked up earlier in the day. It was kinda odd seeing her purr and beg while dripping wet and resembling a warf rat with a thyroid problem.

But after about an hour she was back to normal and, for the first time ever, smelling good and feeling soft.

Why I waited this long is beyond me. It really made a difference.

Thanks for some funny, yet serious, suggestions.

24

p.s.

Hey Audrey. Haven’t seen you around for a while. Glad the LA trip went well. ‘Z’ sends her best.

25

Hmmm, I used to have a roommate who had 5 cats. I lost the coin toss one day and had to wash the cats. (She had to clean out the refrigerator) The cats varied from sweet young cat who adored me, to pure evil cat who I swear it, sounded as if he was singing I’m the devil-I’m the devil-I’m the devil right before he’d barf all over the floor. So I prepared for the task by cleaning everything out of the bathroom excpet pet shampoo and a few towels. I dressed in two long sleeved sweatshirt, even though it was 80 degrees that day, and two pairs of jeans. I had one of the bathtub hoses to work with, so I’d set the water to warm and go find a cat. I started with what I thought would be the worst first. I set Djin, the “I’m the devil” cat who looked like a skeletal cat and hated everyone, into the tub with warm water flowing on his feet. When I set him down I swung one of my legs over the lip of the tub in case he scrambled. All he did was moan and mumble while I made sure he was squeaky clean. Toweling off Djin, and after setting him in a warm bedroom to fluff out and not warn the other cats, I was thinking…
“Well, that was easy…NEXT!”
So, I go for Obie,the buff male cat but a sweetie. Same drill, he did find my leg before I could towel him off, so I just wrapped the towel around him, pried him off my leg and sent him to join Djin.
“Okay, I can do this…what’s the big deal?”
Hey, there’s Oscar, the cantankerous old cat who used the toilet. He attached himself to my wet leg during the entire bath, but still got clean. My pants now smelled like pet shampoo…
Tasha, the bitch of the bunch, pure black little thing with siamese in her. She attached herself to my left arm during the process, bitching me out the whole time. She indeed got clean as well. The other three were laughing and pointing when I dropped her off in the bedroom.
Ah, little Gizmo. The cat who adores me. The one I think is going to be a snap. Boy, was I wrong! I set him in the tub, he climbed up my legs, up my torso and was trying to perch atop my head rather than be wet. I was soaked by this time and just gave up. I sat in the tub, fully clothed with him in my lap to bathe him. It seemed to reassure him having my flesh available for him to dig his claws into. He also didn’t moan, bitch, meow…he HOWLED. I think I still have a small scar from where he caught me just beneath the underwire of my bra on his initial ascent.

My advice…if you need to bathe more than one cat, drink heavily before attempting it.

By the way, I left the pet shampoo in the bathroom and the next morning, accidentally washed my own hair with it. The cats seemed to accept me again after that.

26

Our elderly (17), weensy (7.5 lb) Siamese was hellion enough that when she had a serious flea problem we hired a professional we’d seen on local TV. She called herself the Cat Lady, and was she terrific. Years later I still remember some of her advice:

  1. The real fear most cats have is of standing water. Never put more than an inch or two of water in the sink - rely mostly on a sprayer.

  2. Cats’ body temperature is higher than ours. Since cats are baby-sized, many people automatically go into baby-washing mode and use lukewarm water. That’s a mistake - the cat will not only be pissed off at the indignity, but freezing. Use comfortably warm water.

  3. Along the same lines, if you can, heat the room you’re bathing the cat in up higher than normal. I think we also put the towels in the dryer beforehand, so they’d be nice and warm.

  4. Get one of those cone-shaped collars vets use to keep a cat from licking a wound. It apparently can help the cat if it can’t see the water, and also can keep the cat from biting you.

  5. Hair dryers can dry out a cat’s skin. Better to leave them in a warm room for a couple of hours to dry out fully.

  6. Put Vaseline around the cat’s eyes and nose, which will help prevent soap from getting in.

  7. Your cat will hate you aftwards. Deal with it.

27

I avoid giving the cats a bath. It’s annoying. The only time I had to was when they both got a vicious case of the fleas.

I put on shorts and a t-shirt, squatted in the tub in about a 2" of very warm water, held the cat in front of me under their kitty armpits and hubby dumped water on them. I sudsed them up and he rinsed. Towel off and endure the scathing looks.

Now, I started doing their “pedicures” (i.e. trimming their nails) early so it’s not even an issue now, although they aren’t thrilled with it.