I felt like a right idiot wearing two jackets and pants when it was 90 to 100 degrees outside the car, and then having to take the jackets off and put them on again whenever I got out of the car or got back into it, but since Pippin couldn't very well take his fur off, that's the way it had to be.
If you've ever driven a long way in the car with the air conditioning on all the time, you know that it strips water out of the air like a desert. I could drink an entire 8 cups of water without needing to stop and use a restroom because the air was pulling water out of me so badly. And if I was having thirsty problems, how about my much smaller cat?
The issue was, Pippin wasn't about to eat, drink, or use the bathroom in a moving vehicle. He was fine with riding in a car. He didn't get carsick or meow the whole way (he only said things when he wanted to get my attention, which was rare, since somehow he understood I need to focus on the road). He just didn't want to do the "dangerous" stuff in the car.
Even though he'd never had to deal with predators in his life, he knew bone deep that eating, drinking, or using the litter box made you vulnerable to attack, and he wasn't about to do that in a moving car.
I had a brilliant idea. He would wash himself in the car. And since I'd never used a spray bottle of water for discipline, he wasn't afraid of it (or wouldn't be; he'd never been sprayed before). So what I could do to get more water in him was use a spray bottle to mist his hindquarters and then he'd lick it off.
So the trip I had this idea on, I took the spray bottle with me. Once we were on a stretch of highway where I could spare the attention, I got the bottle out and planned to spray him on his hips, as far away from his face as I could get and still be convenient for him to wash.
Well, the best laid plans and all that. I'm driving, remember, so I can only spare him brief glances. He was looking away when I glanced, so I sprayed ... just as he turned his face full on into the spray.
Sigh. I guess that's the last time I can do that particular trick. I'll have to find a new way to get water into him. And I haven't the slightest idea how ... what is he doing?
He'd squinched his eyes tight shut when the spray hit him, and made all kinds of faces, and licked the water off of his face from around what he could reach with just his tongue, and shook his head multiple times.
But now he had shut his eyes again and shoved his face toward me. For all the world like, "do it again, do it again!"
Sometimes I really doubted my interpretation of his body language, but this, even though it contradicted everything I knew about cats and water, seemed pretty clear.
So I sprayed him again, directly in the face, on purpose. He went through the whole rigmarole again: eyes tight shut, faces made, head shook, water licked off.
And then he shoves his face at me, eyes tight shut, again.
I think all total I sprayed him four or five times before he stopped asking. And he wasn't in the least bit upset when he stopped asking; it was just that he was done now. I felt bemused and amused in equal measures.
After that, I would periodically spray him with the water bottle throughout the trip, perhaps once every two hours. Sometimes he would try to intercept it to get his head sprayed, and sometimes he'd just let whatever get sprayed and lick the water off (the original intent of the spray bottle concept).
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| 2006: One of my all-time favorite pictures |
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