I couldn't keep up with his mats anymore--the fur on his tummy was getting so matted and tangled it was bothering him to the point that he was asking me to try to get them out. Of course he doesn't like me picking at them and pulling at them (who does?) and so he'd leave soon after. And I'm just so tired these days, what with the inadequate breathing and all.
So I decided that I would at least call the groomer at my vet's place, and talk to her and see what I thought.
Her name is Katina, and she seemed very knowledgeable and sympathetic and willing to do just what I wanted and not insist on a full groom or nothing. She said she'd have to shave his tummy short, that you can't just trim it because you risk cutting them due to the ins and outs and delicate skin and the little nipples you have to account for. She also said that I could be there while she did it, and it would only take ten minutes or so, although she mentioned that sometimes they misbehave more when their person is there than when they're alone with her. I laughed and said, oh, like toddlers!
On Tuesday, the 15th (when this post says it was posted although I wrote it later), I took Colby to visit Katina after work. For a few days before that, I kept telling them that on Tuesday I was going to come home and then leave again, and Colby was going with me, but I would bring him back safely in a little while.
When I told Thimble this on the Sunday before, he looked down the hallway to where Colby, happy-go-lucky, was lying on the carpet and being totally oblivious and totally innocent, and then he looked back at me, and the skeptical look on his face said it all "um, you can't even keep yourself safe; how am I supposed to trust you with my little brother?"
I'm afraid Thimble doesn't think much of my emotional abilities. Figures I'd end up with one of my "therapy" cats being aware of his position as such and being skeptical of my abilities elsewhere!
But Thimble didn't have a choice: I was taking Colby with me Tuesday afternoon. I put him (Colby) in the carrier (that Thimble sleeps in at night) and toted Colby and the carrier through the house from the pink room where Thimble sleeps to the kitchen where the door is. At that point I gave up on the idea of using the carrier. I felt like it was too big and awkward and Colby was too small inside the carrier and I was slinging him from one side to the other and was more likely to hurt him than help.
In the kitchen, then, I put on my kangaroo pouch and scooped Colby out of the carrier and into the pouch and grabbed his harness to put on him later (not my best decision but nothing bad came of it).
Colby has always been a bit odd physically. He can run, jump, and climb with the best of them, although sometimes his distance judgement is a bit off. But when I'm interacting with him, it's like he goes kind of floppy, He's very easy to knock off balance or even knock over. He also seems to be double-jointed, although I don't know if a cat even can be double-jointed. When he sits on my lap, like a human, his back legs drape over mine in such a way that makes me wonder about his hip joints.
None of this seems to bother him. In fact he seems to like being that way; he can cuddle in situations where Thimble just can't make himself fit. I thought he would be able to curl up in the pouch rather well.
He did, but only on the trip back. On the trip to the vet's office, he was not pleased and was standing in the pouch on my leg with his front paws over my shoulder and his face pressed into the side of mine. He made unhappy meow comments too. Not constantly or with any kind of pattern, so he wasn't carsick. Just not happy with the situation.
Katina works in the grooming/boarding area in the bottom floor of the vet's office. (It's against a hill, so you go around back to get to the bottom part.) She was very nice to both me and Colby. She not only let me stay in the room while she worked on Colby, but she let me help hold him.
I appreciated this because of that whole weird floppy thing. I had explained it to her on the phone but it's hard to explain unless you're actually handling him and you can feel it. I'd actually said that it wasn't so much that I was afraid she wouldn't hold him firmly enough and he'd get away from her and hurt himself; I was afraid that she would hold him too hard, expecting a normal cat's strength against hers, and end up hurting him.
Since I held the front paws, I could kind of control how much he had to be held by the back paws. She had a table that was wobbly and waist high. The wobbly part is on purpose--I didn't even have to have that explained. When a cat feels unsteady, they have much less of a tendency to leap off the surface than if they feel like they have a good launching pad underneath them.
Colby wanted to look at the shaver once she turned it on, so she let him sniff it. And then she carefully shaved his tummy from between his front legs down to his, er, "sanitary" area (love that euphemism!) and worked around the mats and against the mats until she got those, too. None of these mats were huge yet; I didn't want to let him get to that state.
About halfway through I could feel Colby start to tremble just a bit, and asked if we could pause for a moment. She did, and Colby surged up into my arms against my chest, head snuggled into my neck. In just a brief moment of this he was okay again, and we could continue. It just got a bit much there for a second for him, I guess.
Colby's a rather phlegmatic cat, for all he's a bit of a whiner. He'll put up with stuff that Thimble would definitely be questioning quite thoroughly, but he'll also complain about stuff that Thimble wouldn't even blink at. So of all the cats to need a grooming session probably twice a year (depending how fast his fur grows back and starts to mat again), Colby's the best of the three.
On the way home he sat in the kangaroo pouch, sweet as you please, and didn't rise up to investigate location until we were almost home. And we had to sit through a light at least twice, it being rush hour and all. During the red lights I gazed down at him and petted him--he likes the eye contact. He almost wiggles with pleasure during these moments.
When I got him home, the other two, Thimble included, greeted him with a brief, 'oh, you, glad you're home,' and proceeded to thoroughly investigate me! I'm not sure why I got investigated as intensely as I was expecting them to investigate Colby.
After I met muster finally, Thimble did walk to where Colby was lying on a kitchen rug and give him a brief once-over. Colby rolled onto his side to show Thimble his new hairdo, and Thimble seemed unimpressed but not upset, either.
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| The night after his tummy shave. |
Well, Colby seems to like his new 'do. The next day he waited until I got home to throw up a solid hairball (no food included, unusual for cats), and his fur was the nicest I've ever seen it. Apparently he'd spent all day grooming. I think maybe having all that fur was discouraging him, so when I had the most difficult part removed, he felt capable of actually taking care of the rest of it, instead of just giving up like usual.
He also curled up under the comforter one morning after that, up by my shoulder so he could see me. That was a surprise, his little black-masked face under the white comforter. Both of them like going "under" the covers but both of them get too hot too fast so they can't stay there long. I think Colby liked being cooler (because he definitely is now) and enjoyed a morning of staying under the comforter until I woke up and saw him there.
I'm very glad he didn't hold a grudge and likes his tummy shave. Pippin would have been dreadfully horrified--he'd rather I tug out the tangles than cut them off. I think Thimble would be shocked and offended, as though I'd said he couldn't do a good enough job on his own! And Apricot probably would have retreated into catatonia and never come out of it, given his personality.
When Katina did the shave she left his side fur hanging down, so while I can tell Colby isn't as "full" underneath, you really can't see that he's got short tummy fur unless he rolls over and shows you. And that's nice too--I like my cats to look "natural" like they're supposed to, with no clever designed cuts with names. He feels very plush on his tummy now, too, and very warm.
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