Tag: cats

Have a nice bidet

So, I may have drunk-Amazoned myself a bidet. Pretty sure I had it in the cart the last time I was wall-eyed and on the interwebs.

I blame the advertising, and wine, for making it seem like the most enticing thing in the world to have an icy jet of water shot directly into my asshole post-poop. Not to mention the eco-friendly use of clean, potable water instead of paper, because when the world ends we will apparently need toilet paper more than drinkable water.

I don’t make the rules, I just drunk-Amazon after evaluating the general scheme of things.

When the “Spray Away Bidet” arrived, I failed at convincing my husband that it might have been a gift, or a mistake. We once got a $200 Amazon gift card that didn’t belong to us out of the blue, why not a bidet?

“Hey, look at this thing. It came from Amazon – it might be a gift from someone. It’s a bidet,” I slyly slipped this into the conversation we were having about Oreo cookies and the abhorrence of Oreo Thins. I pulled the box out from behind my desk.

“Why the fuck did you order a bidet?” He said, like I knew he would.

“I don’t think I ordered it, it might be a gift,” I persisted.

“You ordered it. I’m not using it.” He said.

“Why the hell not?” I asked, gliding right past the fact that I had indeed ordered a bidet and it was not a gift or a mistake.

“Does it have a heat feature?” He asked.

“Ha! You would really be pissed if I had ordered the heat option. It costs hundreds of dollars,” I countered.

“See, I knew you ordered it. You had to if you know that. I’m not using it, but I’ll install it for you,” he said.

Considering this a win, I artfully steered the conversation back to Oreo cookies and let the bidet issue sit for the moment.

To his credit, he tried to install it on the toilet closest to my office, but something was something and cuss, cuss, fuck, it was back in the box.

The ever-elusive bidet continued to elude me.

Fortunately, my husband leaves me alone with an abundance of tools for long periods of time. (It’s called ‘working outside the house’ and it sounds awful, but someone has to do it.)

I really didn’t plan on installing the bidet myself until I had to fight with the cat to use the toilet. This is a habit my cats have; they drink toilet water regardless of the 97 bowls of water strategically placed around the house in areas where I kick them over at least three times a day.

I got the bright idea that I could probably cut it back to maybe 30 bowls of water on the floor if I just left the bidet on trickle for the older cats who fall in the toilet occasionally when the water table is low. Also, I wanted a bidet.

Have I mentioned that? I feel like it’s a secret no one talks about. I talked to a few people before I may or may not have ordered the thing and they were like, “Oh yeah. I’ve had one since the pandemic began. You’ll never go back.” I feel like this information isn’t shared enough. I also feel like we should probably figure out how to drink toilet paper when the world ends. I think I mentioned that, too.

I digress.

I had a little more trouble installing the bidet than I thought I would. I also spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning the back of the toilet and marveling at why we don’t have herptafluffalupugus from the funk that had accumulated.

Moment of truth. I sat down, slowly turned the adjustable water flow knob around to medium/high and waited for my life to change.

Nothing.

Aaauugghh! I didn’t turn the water to the toilet back on and I quickly realize that two shot shoulders make it entirely impossible to reach behind myself far enough to reach the stupid water valve while I am sitting on the toilet.

I stand up, bend over, put my face three inches from the bidet, turn on the water, forgetting that I have the bidet pretty much wide open on fire hose-status.

I lost half my eyebrow and a large portion of sight in my right eye. Even worse, the cat was knocked off his perch on the tub, where he sat watching me fuck up his favorite water source. My hopes of having a kitty water fountain/bidet were immediately dashed as the cat now has very hard feelings about being jettisoned off the side of the tub in such an undignified way.

But I’ve got a bidet, y’all. I’m one of the cool kids.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

How to pill a cat in four easy steps

Photo by EVG Culture on Pexels.com

Our cat has seasonal allergies.

I felt sorry for him until an hour-and pint-of-human-blood-ago.

His occasional fits of licking himself in one spot until his fur and skin dissolve are alarming in their escalation. I’ve gone to bed with him just beginning to fixate on a tiny spot and woken up in the morning to find the poor bastard bald from the waist down with part of his liver exposed.

We’ve narrowed it down to “seasonal allergies” through a process of paying off our veterinarian’s lake house. Food allergies were ruled out by spending roughly the same amount we would on a kitty-sized heroin habit for weekly cat food bills. He currently eats (and copiously vomits) kibbles made of meat held to higher standards than those of human baby food.

The best we can do is treat the symptoms when they arise. Which would be fine if this particular cat wasn’t the closest thing to feral a house cat can be.

He has seasonal allergies and he’s skittish. There are still no answers for the skittish part and no money left for a cat therapist. All I can attest to is 10 years of trying to love this weirdo through his problems, which seems to be a prevailing theme in my life in general.

Mind you, this same cat acts like mesmerized serpent when our vet has him on the table. The hissing, pissing nightmare of crating him magically ceases when the crate is opened and he finds himself on the table, under the lights. From that moment forward, at least until I get him back to the car, he’s a lovely, docile creature who stands perfectly still while I look like a turd for letting him lick himself bald and liver-less.

Hell yes I’m jealous. I want a lake house and a cat who loves me.

According to the vet, pilling a cat is “easy peasey.” Keep in mind this is the lady who can also talk me into buying pet food worth its weight in solid silver.

“First, cover the pill with an oily of fatty base because antihistamines taste awful and we want it to slide down his throat easily.”

OK

“Second, wrap the kitty in a towel so he feels safe.”

Wait. What about my safety?

“Third, part his jaw at the joint, push the pill down his throat with your index finger.”

Yeah, about my safety. I have concerns.

“Pinch his little jaw shut gently and rub his throat – he’ll swallow reflexively. That should keep him from being so miserable when he has flare-ups. I’ll have the tech get you a pheromone plug-in to try at home. It should help with his anxiety.”

We did not discuss my anxiety and I gave her money. Again.

Whether it’s an effort to warn the general public or clear my conscience of dark hatred is probably a moot point, however, I would like to address a few key points the veterinarian-of-the-lake didn’t mention.

The instructions should probably include, “have twelve assistants and a giant net available” and plainly state that the part where she told me to “coat the pill in something oily or fatty” should definitely not be done first if it takes 45 minutes to catch the cat to wrap it in a towel so he feels safe after you’ve chased him around the house for 45 minutes.

Clearly step one should be laying out the fatty substance and the pink, pinhead-sized pill in close proximity of one another. Refrain from mixing the two until the cat is caught and wrapped unless you hate your whole life and enjoy crushing disappointment.

Needless to say, catch one ended with harsh feelings between myself and Mr. Skittish when I screamed in frustration after finding a puddle of antihistamine-butter-goo where I left the pill. I’m here to testify that opening a child-proof medication bottle is positively impossible to do while holding a thrashing cat-burrito

Also of note, you will never actually get a cat wrapped in the towel twice, but it will be necessary to staunch multiple wounds you’ll no doubt obtain in the second quest for the freaked-out cat.

So let’s forget any pretense here.

My second attempt at making the cat feel safe was a “three-footer,” meaning I only got three of his feet under control. This was a grave error in judgement from which I sustained a facial wound worthy of a Quentin Tarantino movie as the fur-rocket launched himself off of my face towards the bedroom.

Blinded by my flapping eyelid, I slipped on a $20 pile of cat-food-vomit chasing him down the hallway. At this point it was all-out war. I was determined to make him feel safe.

I blindly clawed my way towards the smell of cat urine while the cat displayed his heightened level of anxiety by liberally spraying everything in his path worth more than $25 before darting underneath the bed.

(Fun fact: cats can sense when something is expensive or irreplaceable. It actually intensifies the smell of their urine and improves their aim.)

When I finally got him backed into a corner under the bed I realized I’d left the towel in the living room with enough of my DNA on it to clone a species.

I did, however, have one of the pills in my pocket because my initial intention was to lovingly wrap him in a towel, place him on the kitchen counter, remove the medication from my pocket while gently holding him in place in his happy-fucking-place towel, wiping the stupid pill in butter, and shoving it down his ungrateful throat.

But things didn’t work out like that.

I’m not going to lie. I just grabbed him and laid on top of him. Honestly, in my altered state of pain and near-exhaustion I no longer gave a shit if he felt safe, I was going to feel a whole lot more fucking safe with that feral bastard pinned underneath me and the bed, towel be damned.

I grabbed his jaw and tried to gently pry from the joint with my thumb while clutching the intact antihistamine like it was The Holy Grail in the other hand. It was this posture in which I discovered yet another key point the veterinarian didn’t mention.

Cats have jaw teeth that can shred titanium.

It took me a second to realize the growls had become gurgles because while “gently parting his jaw at the joint”, his jaw teeth had inflicted an arterial bleed on my thumb that was shooting directly into his windpipe.

I blame pure adrenaline for thinking how fortunate it was to have an oily substance to assist in shoving this pill down the esophagus of my demon-cat from hell with such ease and efficiency. I did not pause to rub his throat as I wasn’t sure if he was reflexively swallowing the pill or a large portion of my thumb-meat.

Instead, I deflected parting blows from a cat who clearly did not feel safe anymore. I slid myself from under the bed in the trail of blood and hair I left going in. I briefly paused to consider smashing the $40 pheromone plug-in.

As I limped to the bathroom to attend to my wounds, I stepped in a pile of foamy, pink vomit that looked suspiciously like the blood-soaked antihistamine I had, only mere moments earlier, fought for my life over.