The other day, the most highly unlikely event became likely: I gave my cat two baths in one day. The first took place at noon and under very normal circumstances. She was dirty and I happened to have a sponge. The second, however, should have been avoided.
It was evening and I was happily preparing to paint a Scarlet Macaw on an extra canvas I had lying around. I had just squeezed some bright, red paint onto my palette when my cat popped up behind me and decided to investigate.
I pulled her away the first time and tried to get the message across that the paint was not for her. She sulked away and I continued my preparations only to have her pop up again for some more investigations. This time she was quicker than me and she plunged her right paw into the paint.
I yelped and grabbed her legs, immediately alerting her that she was in deep trouble. We fought our first battle, with me trying to hold on to her front legs and her trying to pull away.
Eventually I won. I hoisted her up into my arms and examined her paw. Thankfully, it was the only paint-covered part of her body. I took her to my bathroom and turned on the sink to rinse off the paint before it stained too much. It was like the Zombie Apocalypse had just begun.
My cat hates seeing running water come out of the sink. This is most probably due to the fact that I often threaten her after she's done something nasty by turning on the sink full-blast and holding her very near to it.
She began to violently squirm, attempting to escape. I had to hold on to her with all my might. Things started getting ugly.
Instead of having paint only on her paw, she had gotten it all over her body as well as smeared some on my new, blue shirt. I'm sure anyone who would have walked in on us at that moment would have gotten a very wrong impression.
I was really angry about my shirt, so I rinsed as much paint as I could off of her and locked her in my parents' bathroom while I returned to my own bathroom and used soap to clean up my shirt. I then dressed myself in an older shirt and prepared for some raging combat.
I knew that the moment I opened my parents' bathroom door, she'd try to whiz past me, so I opened it a crack and squeezed in as fast as I could. I then grabbed her, found her sponge beside me, dunked it in soapy water, and began to scrub all her paint-covered fur like there was no tomorrow.
I rinsed her off.
I carried her to back to my bathroom, where I dried her up with an extra towel.
I sat on the floor, exhausted and wondering why on earth I didn't carry her out of my room the first time she tried to sniff the paint, while she sat behind the toilet and gave me death stares.
I released her from my room and watched her travel to a corner and commence to lick herself all over; a method of mockery she has adopted to show me that her baths will always surpass mine. We forgave each other soon afterwards and life went back to normal.
Keep this anecdote in mind the next time you sit down to paint a Scarlet Macaw.
