s/o cat bathing - weirdest experiences?

[athersgeo]

This didn't happen to us (fortunately), but to friends of ours.

They'd always thought their cat (Hornby) was a male...until the Sunday morning SHE got into bed with them and proceeded to give birth to kittens...

Then there was Ghost-Kitty.

We were having our water tank replaced. Now, we'd WARNED the plumber that our Felix was a climber, but he clearly hadn't believed us as he left the ladder leading up into the loft (where the tank was) unattended while he did something else. He eventually packed up, closed up the loft and left (job finished).

Later on in the day, we started to wonder where the cat was, but didn't give it too much thought because she was a cat who was perfectly capable of disappearing for a day, particularly if we had workmen in (she HATED most strange men). She'd turn up when it was dinner time.

Then, roughly mid afternoonish, it started. The banshee wail of a Siamese trapped somewhere. (Did I mention the cat was part Siamese? She was. A tuxedo-wearing one, true, but a Siamese in all the most important ways. Especially vocally!) We looked. She wasn't on the doorstep (her usual place to howl); she wasn't trapped in the conservatory; she wasn't wedged under a bed or wandering up and down the landing looking lost (big house; she occasionally misplaced her humans); she hadn't got stuck in the bathroom (she could let herself into the bathroom but not always out of it again)...

It was our other cat sitting directly beneath the loft trapdoor that finally gave her position away: she'd snuck up into the loft while the plumber had been elsewhere and he hadn't subsequently seen her because a mostly black cat doesn't show up in a mostly dark loft! When we finally released her, she was absolutely covered in cobwebs and rather pointedly ignored all of us for the next hour - because clearly it was all OUR fault she'd got stuck up there!

[Gyburc]

I've never had to bathe a cat, thank heavens, but I did on a couple of occasions have to bathe a duck.

Yes, that's right. A duck with a fear of water. 

My duck Lucy has always been somewhat strange. A couple of years ago, when she was still quite young, she suddenly decided that she wasn't going to get into the water to wash and preen herself. She waddled around the garden looking really cross and uncomfortable, with all her feathers fluffed out, and she would stand next to the water and make 'washing' movements, but she would. not. get. in. (In hindsight, I think she was probably getting jumped on by the drake every time she tried to wash.)

After about a day of this, I decided enough was enough, so I chased her down - no mean feat, she can corner really fast - grabbed her up and popped her into the water, whereupon she flapped about in panic and then ran away again. I chased her down again, and this time I held her in the water and started scooping water over her. She decided that this was acceptable, and joined in with gusto, leaving me covered in ducky water.  She also managed to preen one of my fingers instead of her pinion, which hurt like the dickens.

Ducks are weird.

[Kimblee]

This didn't happen to us (fortunately), but to friends of ours.

They'd always thought their cat (Hornby) was a male...until the Sunday morning SHE got into bed with them and proceeded to give birth to kittens...

I have a similar story but I'm gonna pop over to the Gross-Out thread to share it...

@Gyburc: Too funny. You left my abs hurting because I could see my geese doing the same.

[Miss Tickle]

The neighbour's cat was overwhelmed by string.

We trained our cats to follow us outside to the garden by using a harness and the neighbour wanted to do the same, but whenever he put the harness on his cat it would collapse. Poor thing would not move, just lay there like a dead thing. He'd drag the cat around for a bit then give up. It didn't take long to figure out the harness didn't need to be hooked up, just on him, then to anything laying across his back or around his neck. If the cat could feel and see something laying on him he'd flop and stay there until we removed it. Xmas was amusing that year.

[snowfire]

Kitty caught in the fly strip reminded me:  About 10 years ago a friend's mare had gotten tangled up with a fly strip in the barn...a well used fly strip.  She was totally covered with incredibly sticky goo and dead flies.  She was also being taken to be bred that night.  After reading the directions on the fly strip package I went off to the store to by a big jug of mineral oil and a bigger jug of cheap shampoo.  Four hours of rubbing mineral oil into the fly strip gunk and shampooing it out, then repeating.  It was exhausting, and I really hated dealing with sticky dead bugs.  I think she got something like ten oil/shampoo combos that day, but she was so sparkly clean at the end I hardly wanted to let her out because I knew she would love to roll in the dust.  We did manage to keep her shiny until the next day.  She was a gorgeous ink black Arabian with a perfect white star on her forehead.  When I was done with her that day she looked like polished patent leather and silver...and I looked like a soggy dishrag.