The Definition of Chaos

Hartz Groomer's Best Hairball Control Cat Shampoo

Despite cats being known for being clean, self grooming animals, it had been agreed upon by the members of the family that Larry stinks.

After much debate and delay, we reached a consensus that he must be bathed thoroughly.

So today whilst in Walmart for school supplies, we decided to drop by the pet care section for some cat shampoo.

But first of all, look at this shampoo. The cat on the front is completely dry, and looks calm and generally non-harassed. I bet he hasn't even had a bath. Completely misleading marketing. Lies, all of it.

I was surprised that it actually took quite a while to find it; it was tucked away in the corner on a lower shelf. We were just looking for a regular cat shampoo, but the more visible option was the flea killing kind, and since Larry did not have fleas, we settled for this one. Anyhow, Larry had accumulated quite an odor after he was moved to live in the garage as he was shedding so much, so I suppose hairball control was a good idea. It might have worked too well.

We started out in the backyard with a laundry basket (we figured it would have easy drainage, this caused another problem instead), a bucket of water, a few brushes and combs. The first step, brushing extra hair out, wasn't a problem, but Larry immediately resisted once the water came into play. Plus, with soap on him, he was nearly impossible to hold on to. My siblings and I had agreed to certain jobs to try to maintain a sense of order, with my sister in charge of scrubbing, my brother in charge of water, and me in charge of holding him, but this soon proved to be unsuccessful. My little sister insisted that she be the one to hold him, and unable to keep a grip on a wet, soapy cat, consequently let him escape twice. At this point, I realized that I had meant to read instructions on the internet on how to wash a cat, but had forgotten. Oh well.

Throughout this initial ordeal, I noticed that the cat kept trying to climb up the sides of the laundry basket by putting his feet in the holes. We soon realized that he didn't like the feel of water around his paws, so after dumping out the cold water that had accumulated at the bottom, he calmed down considerably.

My little brother on the other hand, did not know the meaning of "a lot of hot water." When I asked him to bring more hot water, he only brought one tiny cup, and I'm talking about a teacup sized cup of hot water to try to warm up the gallons of bathwater for the cat. When I exclaimed, "You can't just bring ONE TINY CUP of hot water," he went back inside and brought back TWO tiny cups of hot water instead. This was not the desired interpretation, so I tried again with, "You can't use a TINY CUP," so then he came back with a bowl. At this point, I didn't know what to say, so I just asked him to "use something bigger," so he comes back with a small necked juice bottle. It did the trick, and Larry was considerably more relaxed with the hot water, but my brother kept trying to use the bottle to fill up with water and rinse the cat, much to the annoyance of my sister and me. Still, a lesson to be learned from this is that if you're bathing a cat outside, make sure to use hot water, as hot as you would to take a shower, because "lukewarm" water is too cold.

After he was sufficiently rinsed, we bundled him up in a towel to take him inside to dry him off. The instructions on the shampoo said to towel dry, but Larry's thick fur held a lot of water, and neither cat nor human had the patience for that. Like I said earlier, the hairball control was supposed to get rid of extra fur, and it worked very well, except all of that fur that came off of the cat went everywhere else. Clumps of wet fur were still stuck to my arms, and there are still little clumps on the bathroom rug. And while we used the blowdryer, fur went a-flying, literally.

Luckily, I had the presence of mind (or perhaps it was just plain foolishness) to take some pictures. Unfortunately, the first few were on a macro setting, so they're kind of blurry, but here they are anyway.