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We gave Sam a bath today.

Well, a half bath.

The Why
Although Sam is not a full-bred Maine Coon, he has the fur of one which hangs off his little kitty legs.
Natural processes happen sometimes and get caught in the fluff of his legs. Most of the time, he's able to clean out the matting himself.
But sometimes kitty gets diarrhea and things get really bad.
That's what happened.

The When
I was so convinced that Sam had died this morning. Usually, he's up on the bed staring at me at promptly 4:33 am to get fed. This morning, I had a full morning of nice, interrupted sleep.
It was extremely nice, but it also felt wrong.
I went downstairs after getting dressed for work to look for him. He was cowering under the chaise, which was weird because he never sits under the furniture- always on top.
As I got closer to inspect, a distinct odor reached my nostrils as I discovered that MY CAT SMELLED LIKE DOODOO.

I guess he felt so ashamed of what he had done that he didn't want to sit on the furniture or asked to be fed. To say he was "covered in it" is an exaggeration. However, his backside was such a thick turdy-hair disaster, that I knew something had to be done right then.

I got Mike out of bed to say that Kitty is not dead, but there is poo and it is bad. Real bad.

The How
I put on my disposable gloves used for cleaning out drains and some heavy duty scissors. Mike held the front end of the beast and I tried to carefully cut around his legs.
Then I discovered the poo was not all dry.
I gagged.
So then we took him to the sink and started rinsing off his bottom half.
BAD IDEA.
That made the smell so much worse. Mike and I were both gagging. The drain backed up. The water turned brown. Sam was yowling. Great way to start the day.

So then we moved him to the tub, which splashed poo water all up on the sides and made the bathroom smell a little more like death. Sam was so upset. Mike grabbed towels to soak up the water.
"I think we're done for now."
I threw the towels in the laundry and Sam laid down.

During the Day
Mike and I went to work, but we were traumatized. We knew it wasn't finished. We spent some time looking at cat groomers. I called all three PetsMarts in the area and not one of them groomed cats.
What the heck.
It's not like I asked you to do a sanitary trim on my iguana.
Then we looked into the pricey boutique grooming shops.All of them would be closed by the time we got there, assuming we could actually fit Sam into his cat carrier, and this had to be done today.
We came to the stomach-sinking realization that we would have to do this ourselves.

The Shopping List
Cat shampoo
A brush
Fancy Feast
Kitteh Drugzzzz (catnip toy)

After Dinner
I put on the gloves again, and we drew him a nice little bath. Mike held his arms as I tried to scrape the poo out of his fur as fast as I could. The water helped it form into cuttable pieces, so I was lopping it off like a hairdresser during the Saturday morning rush. At last, we began to see the pale pink skin and the poo was getting washed away.
We sprayed him down to get all the soap out, and his little kitty legs looked so pitiful. The fluffiness of his fur completely disappeared and he just had these spindly little wet chicken legs holding up his blimp-like belly. His fluffy tail turned into a spindly snake lookin' thing.
Wet Sam was NAGL.
And then he started to weep. I kid you not. He had these little kitty tears welled up in his little kitty eyes. It was heart-wrenching and adorable all at the same time.

When It Was Over
We gave him a good rubdown with the towel, gave him a big helping of the Fancy Feast purchased for this very occasion, and put the catnip hedgehog toy in his face. After a few minutes, he was purring again, though his back half looked like a sewer rat.
I shudder to think of what he'd look like if we'd given him a whole bath. He probably would've scratched a lot more.
During the bath, he seemed to work with us rather than against us. It's like he knew the poo had to come out this way. Though he was meowing pathetically and digging his claws into Mike, he didn't try to run or jump away. He knew that this cleaning was a necessary evil and that his parents were taking care of him.

And now he's sitting right in front of me on the recliner like nothing happened.

I think the Harshner family grew a little bit closer today.

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TWS