Happy Bath Day 2

This one is about a few pointers for giving baths to cats. I am no expert but these are things that I have figured out from my own experience. There are three stages: Pre, During and Post.

Pre-bath:

1.       Clean the bathroom and especially the area where the cat is to be given the bath.

2.       Clean the entire house since the cat will run round after the bath.

3.       Have everything ready and in place for action before you even bring the cat into the bathroom. Once operation kitty bathing starts, there will be no time to stop and make arrangements.

4.       Make sure that the weather is not too cold or wet or the cat might fall ill.

5.       Be prepared mentally and otherwise to take a bath right after giving the cat(s) one. Reason? You will HAVE to. The odds of your remaining dry after the cat is done with its bath are heavily against.

During bath:

1.       Have a strategy suited to the particular cat’s needs; if it is shouts more, like Merry, don’t start with it; if it is strong, like Pippin, don’t wait till the end because you might be tired; if it doesn’t mind the water too much, like Sam, you might want to start with it; if it is easy to manage, like Frodo, and you are tired, you might want to wind up the process with it.

2.       Act fast, act efficiently. No dillydallying.

3.       Remember that the chances of the cat becoming more aggressive in its efforts to escape are higher after you have applied the shampoo. It is one of those things like Murphy’s law, I think.

4.       Towels! Big, fluffy ones, preferably. Wrap the cat in it and rub him quickly but gently so that you can get most of the water out. You DO NOT want a dripping cat running amok all over your house.

5.       Reinforcements, if possible. It is extremely difficult to give a bath to a reluctant cat single-handed!

Post-bath:

1.       Make sure that the cat is comfortable and not sitting in a place where it can catch a cold.

2.       Have your own bath, since you will be dripping in all likelihood.

3.       Clean up the bathing area of the cat(s) and wash everything.

4.       Be ready to groom your cats, especially those who are not very enthusiastic about grooming themselves.

5.       Feed your cats something they like soon after they are a little soothed, so that they can calm down faster.

Let me just end with a couple of quotes about cats and baths.

Cat lovers can readily be identified. Their clothes always look old and well used. Their sheets look like bath towels and their bath look like a collection of knitting mistakes.

Eric Gurney How to Live with a Calculating Cat (Courtesy of www.catquotes.com)

Cat bathing is a martial art.

Anonymous (Courtesy of http://user.xmission.com/~emailbox/cattags.htm)

Happy bath day to all of you and your cats!

Happy Bath Day

Cats, as everyone who knows anything about cats can tell, do not like baths. As a rule, they feel very strongly about hygiene and are usually quite clean through their grooming efforts. However, they do need to be given baths once in a while due to reasons of cleanliness and skin health as well as the heat during summer. My boys received their first bath of the season and, indeed, of the year, a few days back. As always, each of them reacts differently to the bath, their responses ranging from slightly neurotic to completely psychotic. Below I will describe the four types of reactions; let’s see if you can guess who fits the reaction: Frodo, Sam, Merry or Pippin. Write your answers in Comments.

1.       He doesn’t mind the water too much and even though his eyes grow as round as saucers, like the dog in the tinderbox story, he doesn’t really struggle too much until after the shampoo has been lathered onto him.  Even when he thrashes about to escape, he does not shout too loudly. However, if one isn’t very careful, he can quickly slip away from one’s hand. He is really clever about that. If he is in a bad mood, he might bite also, though not hard. He does not lick himself for quite some time and lets the water dry on its own.

2.       He is not easy to bathe because he is very strong. He does shout and struggle but not too unmanageably. His bath takes the longest because he is usually the dirtiest. It is really quite a fight to get him to stick around until the bath is done. He kisses us a lot to persuade us to let him go. When he feels really determined to escape, one person cannot hold on single-handedly. He prefers to groom his brothers to help them dry rather than groom himself. He also might get soot or cobwebs on his face and coat within half an hour after the bath.

3.       He is the easiest to manage because he does not shout too much or fight too hard. He does struggle to some extent, though, and kisses us a lot. He is actually one of the easiest to give a bath to though he does not like it at all. He usually goes last because he is the easiest to handle and after the other three we are too tired to really fight a cat trying to run away with shampoo smeared all over. The best part is that he is very meticulous about drying himself off. Even if he is the last to be given a bath, he will invariably be the first to dry off.

4.       He is the worst! Not because he struggles very hard, which is manageable, but because he absolutely hollers his head off! To hear him one would think that he was being tortured with hot pokers or something from a hall of horrors. He just hates being given a bath and minces no words (or meows, rather) to express that. By the time he is done, we feel completely exhausted. He also spooks the others with his howling, so we don’t usually start with him. He, again, does not lick himself dry, though he has the softest coat of the four.

So, that’s that about the four. In the next post, I will write a bit more about the bath question. For now, enjoy guessing! And here are some pictures. The first one is of them as kits. It was taken when we had visited Kolkata in 2010. The rest are from the latest bathing session.

ALL TOGETHER AT KOLKATA

MERRY

FRODO

PIPPIN

SAM

A Parent's Worst Nightmare

The worst nightmare for a parent is something bad happening to their child. Literally as well as metaphorically, there is no worse nightmare. And in this post I am referring not to the literal nightmares that my husband and I have had on account of our boys (God knows we have our fair share of those!) but the metaphorical ones.

In my last post I mentioned that my boys had a rough patch health-wise. That happened last month. It started at the end of January with Sam throwing up a few times. Then Pippin threw up all night the next day. We took them both to a vet who examined and declared that there was nothing wrong with them. Pippin continued to vomit all night that evening onwards, again. I called their old vet who had been on leave following childbirth. She had resumed her practice and was kind enough to see him after midnight. She gave him some injections to control his vomiting and also some antibiotics and some medicines to be given orally. That night Frodo threw up once.

The next day wasn’t pleasant since Pippin threw up every time we tried to give him medicines orally. By late evening he had stopped eating or drinking. I finally called our family veterinarian in Kolkata that night for advice. She suggested that we put him on drip immediately. However, it was late on Sunday night and no such facility was available. We had no choice but to wait till morning. Thankfully, Pippin did not vomit any more that night, probably because he had had nothing for quite some time.

The next day we took him to the vet recommended for giving the drip. We had consulted him earlier at one time but had changed vets of late due to the distance (his clinic is 15 kilometres) from my house. He suspected Pancreatitis or something similar and started Pippin on drips, antibiotics, vitamin B complex and other necessary medicines. We gave him 4-5 rounds of that. We also gave him medicines orally. Thankfully, he stopped vomiting soon after the drips started. But it took days for him to regain his appetite.

In the meantime, we had their blood tested. Their urea, creatinine and other parameters were all awry, so we started them on a renal diet. We also started giving all of them a medicine to bring down urea. Frodo, because he vomited once more, also had to take medicine for that. Once all that was done with, we gave all of them liver medicine for 15 days since liver profiles hadn’t turned out too sanguine either.

In the meantime, Pippin started peeing on our bed. Now, that might seem like a misdemeanour. But those who have lived with cats know that errant peeing behaviour is more likely to be a sign of health problems or stress than behavioural issues. Consequently, we got an USG done. The USG showed some mineralization in his right kidney and some possible crystals in his bladder. My husband—his ingenuity be praised—also collected urine samples for three of the boys. Merry’s could not be collected on time to submit at the lab. The tests showed crystals in two of the samples. So now they are on a special Urinary diet. This diet will continue for a while.

In addition to diet control, we also placed a plastic sheet on the bed and covered it with a newspaper sheet so that if Pippin peed on the bed, the sheets wouldn’t get soiled. Funnily enough, the plastic sheet has now become the playground for all my boys! We also started discouraging such behaviour and encouraging Pippin to pee in the right place by talking to him. Surprisingly, it worked. Even before the special diet was started, Pippin resumed correct urinary behaviour. He now pees (and poops!) on command, subject to there being anything to egest.

As I read the last paragraph, I realise that only an avid cat lover would understand and appreciate it. So, if you find that paragraph or even the whole post or that I can go on and on about such bodily functions uncomfortable, silly or downright insane, I will totally understand.

Those days have been easier to write about than to live through. Words cannot fully capture the anxiety, the pain and the stress we all went through—all six of us. They are all much better now. A second round of blood tests has shown good improvement in Pippin and we have extrapolated that result for the others as well. But their worms are acting up since we could not deworm them on time due to the above-mentioned health complications. The heat is also bothering them. Merry is getting a little depressed due to his father’s unusually busy schedule at work. Like any good parent will tell you, worrying is part of the job description and the list of things to worry never ends!

Here are a couple of pictures from those days. One is of them with their new ‘playground’ and the other is of Pippin in the car on the way to the vet’s. He was going for the USG that day.

The New Playground

Pippin in the Car

A New Family Member

The family that prays together, stays together. Or so the saying goes. I believe that the family that faces good and bad times together without killing each other is the one that stays together. My extended family has gone through some pretty dramatic ups and downs in recent times. Since the last time I wrote on this blog, I have lost my mother, my brother has had a son, and my boys have gone through a rough patch health-wise (more on that later), among other things. I’m going to write about the second thing today. My nephew.

My nephew has been on this earth for close to two months now and he already has multiple names. That is typical of us Bengalis. We have at least two names each- a ‘bhalo’ or ‘good’ name (which is why you find many Bengalis asking people for their ‘good’ name, as if there is a ‘bad’ name as well!!!) and a ‘daak’ or ‘pet’ name. Sometimes, it’s difficult to say why a pet name is a ‘pet’ name because it is good enough to be a ‘good’ name (pardon the pun).

Such is the case of the newest member of the family. His ‘good’ name is Writobroto. I am certain that he will curse his parents for that at some future point in his life, especially when he starts going to school and finds that no one can pronounce or spell his name, or when people ask him the meaning of his name ad nauseam, or when interviewers typically begin by questioning him about his name. If he is smart (I am optimistic, given who his blood-related paternal aunt is ;-D), he will get people to call him by his ‘pet’ name Ayushman. Now how I am going to bless him with long life is another question (the traditional blessing is ‘Ayushman bhava’, which means ‘be long-lived’, and if he is already ‘Ayushman’, how can I tell/bless him to be ‘Ayushman’- kind of a conundrum, eh?)

But that is in the future. For now, he is oblivious of all the name-calling (!!!) and goes by the name of Ayush. Why he couldn’t have been named that to begin with I cannot say and it is not my place to say. I, on my part, am probably going to call him something else altogether. I haven’t yet decided. I am trying to choose between Hector, Cuchulain, Beowulf, Ulysses, Ramses and Thor. Not joking! Perhaps I should do a poll. His parents, of course, will probably let me nowhere near him after reading this. Oh well!

He is a funny looking little fellow with his father’s eyes and eyebrows and his mother’s mouth and chin (look at the picture). I can’t imagine what he will look like as an adult! He is like other babies at this stage- not very interesting to anyone except his parents and grandparents. I know that this is sacrilege, but for me that is the truth. He’ll probably turn into someone I would enjoy spending time with some time in his life. But that time is not now. Not for me. Call me strange but I DO NOT GO ALL KOOCHIE-KOO AROUND BABIES. Ayush isn’t a bad baby, actually. He is rather cute, to be honest. The nicest thing about him is that he is a cheerful baby. That I really like about him.

Maybe he will turn out to be a cheerful, even-tempered, level-headed person like his grandmother (my mother) was. That would be nice. Such a person is a great asset in a family of hotheads. I think that is one of the million reasons that my mother is missed. I don’t expect little Ayush to step in and fill that role (poor fellow, he probably has people already expecting sooooooooo much from him); it would be unfair. But I’d like to think that if he turns out like that, he’d like to hear some day that he’s got that in common with the grandmother whom he never met.