Spa Day

...with the kitties.  At last!  As always, we go in a certain order.  Pekuah is first and complains the loudest.  Anyone walking by the house would call the SPCA for sure thinking there is a cat who, at the very least, is being skinned alive.  But her misery is over the fastest.  And as soon as she is mostly dry, has had her allergy shot and flea drops, I open the bathroom door she is gone in a flash - to remain out of sight until the next filling of the food bowls.

Next is Eliza.  Her evil eye says she knows I hate her and she hates me back.  She doesn't complain much, but she's strong and is the only one who comes close to pushing open the shower door.  At least she only bites me once. That's par for the course.  One bath, one bite.  After leaving the bathroom, she hangs around because she wants to see another suffer also.

The Shah.  By this time he is under the bed.  (I have had the foresight to catch them all in the bedroom before I start.)  He hisses threateningly - even realistically - as I spot him.  Unfortunately, he is sitting on the lid of a large storage box.  Just right for sliding him out like a drawer!!  Caught.  He hisses again, but with no conviction at all.  Then he tries to talk me out of it.  "There must be some mistake," his eyes say,  "You love me.  Everybody loves me.  This can't be happening to me."  In the shower he is the quietest of all.  That's because he's concentrating all his energies on putting a strangle-hold around my neck.  We have to "discuss" that a couple of times before he gives up.  Add one set of scratch marks on my torso.  But he didn't mean it and he's a good boy for the soapin' and scrubbin' and rinsin'.  

Once he gets out of the shower he doesn't try to get out of the bathroom.  I think it's because he's embarrassed for the others to see him without his majestic fluff.  Even if it were warm I wouldn't let him out without a blow dry.  He'd be rubbing recently freed winter cat fluff all over my everywhere.  Better to contain the stuff in the bathroom, so for the next hour, no exaggeration, we go to with brush and dryer.  At first he is very patient.  I am working under his chin and on his jowls and chest and he just loves that.  He sits patiently with his nose pointed to the ceiling while I work and tell him how handsome he is.  He loves that part, too.  But as we move on to everything else he starts to give little mews now and then.  I finally realize I have stopped telling him how beautimous he is.  As soon as I start again, he is happy to let me work on until I think there's more cat hair in the trash than on the cat.  But at last, he is ready to be admired.  As he strolls out the door, majestic fluff and all, there is Eliza, as usual, waiting to make sure he is OK and then batting him on the leg to let him know not everyone lives to admire him.

All of us are happily exhausted by this point.  Pekuah comes later to make friends again.  Eliza - well - she suffers my attentions, as long as they are short lived.  And Gyu, with one last hiss to let me know how privileged I am to have him to admire, strolls off with Eliza to find a spot of sunshine.