Call of the Wild

My cat Muffin had a big day yesterday.  Let me stop for a moment and backtrack.  Muffin is everything her name suggests:  fluffy in both body and mind.  For example, she still hasn't fully mastered the concept of up, as in:  look up and make sure Freya isn't on the table waiting to jump down in front of you so she can start a good game of chase.  Freya is our other cat.  She would rule the world if only she had opposable thumbs.  Alas, she is stuck in our house ruling over our family and "playing" with a companion cat who is an idiot intellectually challenged. 

There's not a lot we can do about Muffin's fluffy little brain.  The body, however, is a different story.  Two of Muffin's more charming qualities are her ability to cough up hairballs the size of small infant and the nauseating aroma that regularly wafts from her nether regions. 

The hairballs are a lot of fun (I say, because my husband is in charge of clean-up).  In a perfect world, Muffin likes to cough them up at 3:00am, taking care to be as loud as possible so she can wake us up.  There's also the matter of location, location, location (we all know how important that is).  It is critically important that the product of her dead-of-night hacking be strategically placed along the path from the bed to the bathroom, so that a sleepy person getting up with a bright-eyed little girl at 6:02am will step inadvertently step in it.  Muffin is shockingly good at picking the precise location.  Fortunately for me, that location is almost always located on the hubby's side of the bed.

With the aroma, however, we all suffer.  Particularly when it's humid, as it has been lately, the stench can be rather unpleasant.  I'm not even going to get into the random things that get stuck because 1) you don't want to know and 2) this is a family blog.  Let's just say that when I thought about how cool it would be to have a long-haired cat, these were not the things that crossed my mind.

So yesterday, she took a little trip to the vet to be groomed.  Some people may take their cats to groomers, but Muffin has to go to the vet because she needs to be sedated.  Have I mentioned that the little fluffball is also the most neurotic cat I have ever known?  Yeah, so. 

Step one is, of course, getting her into the cat carrier.  This is no easy task and stealth is critically important.  It is game over if the cat sees the carrier.  Luckily, this is Muffin we're talking about.  Since she isn't the most observant cat, this was fairly easy.  Getting her in, though.  Not so much.  This is also my husband's job and he did it beautifully.

This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.  No really, it is.

P.S. - Do you just love Freya checking it out from behind the doorway across the hall?

So off we go to the vet's.  I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive but also a little excited.  Although I've had her trimmed before, this was the first time that I was going all out.  Yep, that's right.


Muffin was getting The Lion Cut.

I dropped her off in the morning and expected to pick her up late afternoon.  They called me when she was ready to be picked up and as soon as the Little Miss was up from her nap, we were out the door.  I got there and they brought Muffin out to me in her carrier, ready to go home.  I really wanted to see what she looked like, but it was hard to tell through the carrier.  However, I could tell that she took the whole lion thing to heart because she was hissing, growling, and spitting the entire time.  When she lunged at the office cat (thankfully she was still safely contained in her carrier), I decided it was probably time to put her in the car and hope that she chilled on the way home.

The vet assistant told me to let her hang out in a quiet room for a little while so she could decompress.  So once home, we brought her up to my bedroom and (guess who?) let her out of her carrier.  She jumped out and, rather than acting like a wild animal, she rubbed all of us and was purring. 

Of course, by this time I was laughing.  You'll see why in just a second.  First, so you have a basis of comparison, here is Muffin's "before" shot.

I am a hairball-making machine.

 

Why, yes, I am that beautiful.  Now stop taking my picture.  What's going on?

And, drum roll please...ta da!

I would be plotting my revenge over this indignity if I could remember that there was an indignity in the first place.

Hey, I wonder if I can make a decent hairball with my paw hair.

She's like a third the size of the cat we sent in.  I can't say that she loves her new cut, but she is holding her own.   

Don't gloat.  You're getting four teeth out on the 29th.