The Wet Blanket

It's still not quite hot enough for us to justify turning on the AC, but the humidity is making it fairly uncomfortable, especially for the cats.  We keep plenty of fans on, so they can get cool when they need to. The thing is, cats don't really like fans that much. They hate the mad levels of air flow and dislike the bits of stuff that may fly into their eyes. My roommate decided to search for alternatives.

One of the alternatives suggested was to wet your cat's paws with water. Now, if you own a cat or have ever owned a cat or have just even seen a cat, I'm sure you can quite clearly understand the flaw in this logic. Most cats loath water. Many consider it to be their archenemy. In fact, some cats believe that Cat Hell is just one giant bath after another. On a related note, a lot of cat owners have theorized that Hell will involve having to GIVE cats baths, one after the other. In any event, we knew dipping their paws in water wasn't going to work.

The next idea was to place a damp cloth onto the cat's back. At first glance, this idea seems almost as dangerous as the wetting of the paws, but then again, it's not sudden water, it's a slower process of water cooling the cat down, with a nice layer of fur between the cat and the water. My roommate thought this had a better chance of actually working on our little felines.

Fluffy, who is still with us by some miracle, was the first to receive the 'wet blanket' treatment. My roommate took one of our blue dishcloths and ran it under the water, making sure to get as much of the water out of it as he could before attempting to place it on the cat. He stood Fluffy up and laid the dishcloth on him. Fluff was a bit confused (but he's always a bit confused . . . I guess this was a different kind of confused . . .) but he didn't automatically push the towel off. Instead, he walked around, trying to make it just slide off of him. Finally he gave up and laid down again.

Once he was down again, he left the towel on him, and seemed to actually enjoy the cooling effect of it. After a while, he walked around again and this time, it actually did fall off. My roommate put the dishcloth down in front of him so that Fluffy could lay his paws on it. He did this for about 15 minutes before he finally decided he'd had enough.

After that, Fluff seemed happier about life. He slept quite peacefully for a while and appeared to be more alert once he woke up. His appetite was somewhat better and he even sat with me for a while and demanded some affection. This was far closer to his normal non-hot behavior. Overall, I would say the Wet Blanket Treatment worked fairly well.

I should add, however, that Fluffy is the easiest of the cats to deal with. The girls, Bitchy, Testy, and Crazy, tend to be on the more difficult and eccentric side. I'm not sure if the towel thing will be successful with them . . . or if we'll have any fingers left if we try.