Last night after I took a shower, Cruz the Cat came to visit me in the bathroom.  He has a long-standing love affair with the shower; he loves to jump in after we get done showering and lick the drops as they come out of the faucet.  This is the one and only time that Cruz is a fan of the bathtub.  Other than the faucet fixation, he hates the shower.  He especially hates it when his owner decides that it’s time to bathe his nasty indoor-outdoor self.  

Just before I took the shower,  I noticed that Cruz had located my bathrobe (or, in cat vocabulary, The Most Perfect Napping Place) and was sleeping on it.  When I forced him to get off of said bathrobe, I noticed that he had left a dirty brown spot on it where he had been laying.  The dirty brown spot indicated to me that it might be time for Cruz’s quarterly bath time.  But he didn’t know that he’d left a dirty brown spot on my perfectly white bath robe.  He only knew that the faucet was dripping, the shower door was open, and the moment was right.  But I am smarter than the cat.  I remembered.  

So I thought to myself, self, this is a good time to just go ahead and bathe the cat.  He’s already in the shower, the shampoo is already on the counter.  Just go for it.  Besides, I reasoned, I am in the mood to take on a challenge that I can win.  And in the contest of Sarah v. Cat, Sarah wins. 

What I didn’t realize, though, is that it would be a really close call.  30 minutes and one angry cat later, Cruz was clean and moaning over his defeat in the bathroom.  

So tonight when I came home from work, I decided that in light of my recent pet-washing victory, I would wash the dog.  Zack and I are going out of town this weekend and my parents will be dog-sitting for us.  Giving Scout a bath has been on my list of things to do all week; I can’t send Scout to her first weekend away smelling like a dirty dog.  After washing the cat, the idea of giving Scout a bath seemed like a bed of roses.  Sure she’s not as small as the cat is, but she is surely more obedient.  Turns out that washing the dog isn’t a lot easier than washing the cat.  I’d liken the choice between them to one of the nastiest ‘would you rather’ questions you could come up with.  Would you rather take 5 years off your life from the stress of trying to catch your cat as he does soapy Nastia Liukin quality somersaults in the bathtub?  Or would you rather be soaking wet and covered with dog hair as you beg water to defy gravity and somehow wash all the soap off of the underbelly of your 45 pound beast who totally hates you for this?

I’m no idiot, though.  This time, I bathed Scout before I took a shower.