I came down to find one of the burners looking like this:

Kitchen Burner

I couldn’t imagine what had led to that – pancake mix? I texted my roommate to ask what had happened. Turns out she had spilled milk on the stovetop, left a cleansing agent to soak while she showered, and completely forgotten about it.

The smudges in the white tell what happened next: I looked up to see the cat walk across the stovetop.

My roommate tends to buy “environmentally healthy” cleaning agents, but I have no idea what she used on the stovetop, or what’s in it. And the cat may be a brat, but I love him and don’t want him to poison himself by licking his paws. A damp paper towel didn’t do the job….. sooooo…

BATH TIME!

The kitchen sink was full, so I opted for my roommate’s bathroom sink (hey, it’s her cat, and her cleaning agent that led to this, right?! Plus, it’s her stuff in the sink) I already had the cat firmly in my arms, to keep him from licking his paws. I’d put something over the stovetop so he couldn’t run off and re-start the whole process.

The cat has had one bath before. Apparently one experience was enough. The first thing I realized was: time to change into a top I don’t care about! Oddly enough, he still let me pick him up after putting him down for the moment it took me to change.

But the moment we got back into the bathroom, with the sink full of warm water, he reacted. He clings, and claws his way up over your shoulder until he can jump off your back. He escaped and hid in my room, but I caught him and carried him back down. He managed pretty amazing positions in trying to hold himself above the water (only made more interesting by the fact that one of the walls he was trying to hold himself up on was a mirror). I earned four impressive scratches on my right arm, and kept wishing I had my laptop to record the whole thing.

It didn’t help that I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time!

I finally got his paws in and he calmed down, resigned. His paws are clean and he’s spent most of the time since hiding in a tent made out of some of my towels hanging over the back of a chair.

Cat's tent

….. And licking his paws, of course:

...Because my bath wasn't thorough enough!