A Tornado Made of Arms and Fingernails and Teeth

Hmm... of all the things I thought I would blog about first, I didn't think my cats would win out. Oh well.

Stormy, our black and white kitten, had a close encounter of the wet kind, this morning. I was getting dressed and heard a soft splooshing sound, which prompted me to rush out of the bedroom and see what had happened. Sure enough, I found Stormy in the hallway looking half-drenched and miserable. The lid of the toilet was up and water was all over the floor. Heather grabbed a towel and we started drying Stormy off. Cloudy, of course, wondering what all the fuss was about, wandered into the bathroom and promptly started shaking his feet off from all the puddles on the floor. I then had the bright idea of using the hair dryer.

Some back story. Our kittens hate loud bits of technology. I suspect they view things like the vacuum cleaner and the garbage disposal as noisy demons. Their usual reaction is fleeing to some safer part of the room, like under the couch, or possibly Utah. Did I remember all this? Of course not!

I held onto Stormy while Heather turned on the hair dryer. Roughly 5 seconds later, I wound up with a still wet cat and the general appearance of a man who punches plate glass windows for fun. The first thing that came to mind was the SNL sketch starring Will Ferrell where he plays Harry Caray and describes his reaction to something as a "tornado made of arms and fingernails and teeth". Pretty accurate, if you ask me. I think Stormy may have made all of his fur turn pointy, but I'm not sure.

While I attempted to stop my three-inch long scratches from leaking, Heather finished drying Stormy off, and life returned to normal. I'm hoping this will serve as a warning to Stormy and Cloudy about the dangers of toilets - only time will tell.

Lessons Learned:
1) Cats and hair dryers don't mix.
2) If you're still hell-bent on blow-drying a cat, grab it by the scruff of the neck.
3) It might be easier to just leave the cat in the toilet and engage the flush mechanism. This wouldn't have worked for us, given that Stormy had extricated himself from the toilet without too much effort, but it's still a reasonable observation.