Cat Bath?

One of the memories I have stuck in my head is of a cat Aspenn and I had helped take care of when we were very little:


Our dad came home in his beat up yellow truck, he had just been to the junk yard for some parts to another vehicle. On his way home, he had heard what sounded like a kitten meowing somewhere in the cab. Upon inspection, he found the little white kitten in the cab of the truck. He assumed it had gotten there sometime when he was getting in or out of his truck. Despite our mother's allergies, he decided to let us try to keep the cat.



The first thing Aspenn and I did was name it. Snowball was fun to try and take care of for young kids like us. At the time our family dogs seemed to either keep escaping out the back yard, or flat out be stolen by someone wanting to go to the park that was just across the street from our house.


One weekend, Aspenn and I decided it would be a good time to give the Snowball a bath. I was terrified of the claws, and had assumed that if I was holding Snowball I would let it go. We didn't want to lose Snowball, but knew we couldn't give it a bath inside the house. So we took the Snowball outside by our big tree in the front yard. I quickly lined up the hose, and had turned the water on full blast.


When I got to the end of the hose, I told Aspenn to hold the Snowball out away from her body so that if it scratched, it wouldn't get her face or her body. Once she did that, I took the end of the hose and kinked it so that I could get my thumb in the right position, and then released it full blast onto Snowball.


Needless to say Snowball was NOT happy, and immediately let out a wail while pulling it's front legs up and over Aspenn's arms. The force of the Snowball trying really hard to get out of Aspenn's hands caused its little nails to puncture Aspenn's arms from each paw. This made her scream. Until that time I had never heard my twin scream like that. I can only describe it as a blood curdling scream. 


It was no suprise that when the Snowball drew blood Aspenn let it go. After Aspenn got her band-aids, we decided to go looking for Snowball. It wasn't long before we found it hiding in our neighbor's tree. Since Snowball had clawed Aspenn, I was going to climb the tree to get it.


Once I got the cat out of the tree, it somehow came loose. Within minutes I was covered in hives from the tree. This was the first allergic reaction I can remember, and it wasn't long before my mother helped to cover me in hydrocortisone cream.


Snowball disappeared after all of this happened. Needless to say Aspenn never wanted to help bathe a cat again, and I never got near that tree again.