Cattitude

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

10/28/01

Anybody who thinks cats hate water has never lived with a cat.

They’re fascinated by running water. Leave a tap going in a bathroom sink, and a nearby cat will jump up and examine the stream, bat at it with a paw, peer into the drain where the water is going, and if thirsty, might even take a few swings with the old tongue at the water.

Sundays, when I get up early and my wife sleeps in, is a good time to take a tub, and so I put the hot water on at a low setting so the noise doesn’t disturb my wife. While the claw-foot tub slowly fills, I have the opportunity to grab breakfast and get the paper.

Often as not, there will be a cat sitting in the tub when I turn the water on. If there isn’t a cat sitting in the tub, there will be one shortly. The sound of running water, you see. They can’t resist that.

There is an unspoken convention among the cats, or at least I believe it’s unspoken, that one cat, and one cat only, shall inhabit the tub at any given time. How they decide this among themselves for each occurrence is unknown. Presumably it depends on who boss cat is at that particular moment.

As a result of all this, on any given Sunday morning, it is likely that the tub in my house will feature a thin stream of warm water flowing into the tub at one end, and a cat sitting on the enamel at the other end. With minor variations, the following ensues:

The cat gets up and walks down to the tiny puddle extending from the drain. The cat will soberly examine the stream of water, and then the puddle, essaying a tentative bat with one paw, and taking a quick taste test to affirm that it is, in fact, water, and not something like yellow extract of dog or something like that.

Then the cat goes back up to the head of the tub and sits down, and commences to groom. The more timid cats will settle for licking at the chest ruff, while the bolder ones will go for the inside haunch washing with full rear leg extension, a difficult move that adds a half point on the judging. Cats often use grooming as a form of denial.

The puddle will grow larger as the cat gets cleaner. After a few minutes, the cat will decide he’s clean enough, and sneak a glance to see if the puddle has decided it’s big enough. It hasn’t, so the cat will stride down to discuss the matter. The cat will note that it had to traverse less than half the length of the tub to reach the shoreline of the puddle, and that this would seem a good spot for a distinguished feline of note and an unremarkable minor body of water to reach something of a gentleman’s compromise. The puddle, of course, will inch along up the tub.

The cat will make a few bats at the water, and go and sit down at the very top of the tub, where it begins to curve in earnest into the backrest. The cat will simply sit there, staring off in a noncommittal direction, sang froid betrayed by a few glares in my direction. The cat knows that I have something to do with this state of affairs, and wants to share with me the news that should he, The Cat, get wet, I shall be held responsible and liable to the fullest extent of the law. I, of course, am leaning against the door jamb, observing in silence but with a wide grin while my breakfast burns. The cat doesn’t not find this helpful.

The puddle grows, sometimes inexorably, and sometimes just because it’s a stream of water flowing into a place where there is no outlet, and my spell checker isn’t sure how to spell "inexorably" either. The cat, now agitated, starts an angry and aggressive form of grooming.

Then the water will come with inch of the nearest feline paw, and all pretense ends. The cat stands, and watches carefully to see what the water will do next. As if the cat doesn’t know already.

The number of paws that subsequently get wet is an accurate index of cattitude. The Maine Coons, intelligent and pragmatic, usually jump out at first contact, although not until they have pulled their considerable bulk up to the very top of the tub bottom, delaying the inevitable until the last possible moment. The Siamese mix will often get three paws wet before finally snarling and jumping out.

We had one cat, Calvin, who took cattitude to outrageous extremes. He once stood in the water as it reached nearly to his belly, snarling and refusing to give ground. I am quite sure he was demented, and the coyote he doubtlessly refused to avoid probably thought so, too. But I’m sure he was tasty with catsup. (That whole line of cats didn’t do well: one brother managed to get run over, quite a trick in an area where one car an hour goes by, and another died of cancer at age four. The one survivor, Shasta, wound up in Pasadena just in time for a large earthquake to come along, which proceeded to dump a large and heavy object on Shasta’s tail as she flew about the shaking apartment in a full scale panic. The poor thing has been utterly psychotic ever since. Put that one in our tub, and she would probably drown).

Now: if we compare our involvement in Afghanistan to that little puddle of water in my tub...

Ah. But I can tell, from the loud shouts of laughter from the left wingers, and the frustrated snarls from the right wingers, that you’ll all figured out where I was going with this.

No need to waste your time, then.

Which just leaves one question: How many paws will we get wetted before we finally realize that we need to pick fights that not only make any kind of sense, but which we can hope to win?