Chocolate kitty

I've been around cats my whole life but never in my life have I had to bathe a cat. That changed today.

I came home on my lunch break as Matt was incapacitated after surgery and I had to check on Matt and the kids. I took Mojo on his usual walk, and then took my time to actually eat lunch. Of course, I was running late at this point.

I had my shoes, coat and sunglasses on and was heading back to my car. Gunnar is meowing up a storm and I ignore him. I hear him use the potty and wonder if he was telling me he needed to go potty. Maybe he wanted praise?

I kiss Matt goodbye and as I turn around and face the garage, I laugh at the site of Gunnar butt scooting along the floor. By the time I reach the back door by the garage, I bend down to kiss Gunnar goodbye and I notice that he smells horrible and there's some chocolate on the table runner he was just sitting on. I look at the floor he just scooted across and there's a solid chocolate trail leading from the litter box to the table.

I quickly grab up the cat before he gets on anymore furniture. I turn him over and am horrified to see the poopiest cat butt I have ever seen.

"I need help" I barked at Matt and I hurriedly ran to the upstairs bathroom to clean up chocolate kitty. Usually I would change into rags, but there wasn't time so I threw a bathrobe on over my work clothes.

Matt (hobbly on one leg) held the kitty down while I washed and washed and washed the kitty.

It was awful and never-ending! I held his but under the water and soaped him up. I scrubbed and scrubbed and couldn't get him clean. He was crying, struggling, wondering what he did to deserve this torture. He was all skinny and scraggly and sad from the water. I kept squirting more puppy shampoo on him. Matt screamed to just douse him in shampoo, so I squirted half the bottle on him. There were bubbles galore, but finally we got him clean enough. He smelled like shampoo and it took quite some time to rinse all the suds off. He wasn't patient enough to let us dry him off, but with Matt home, I hoped he would plop down on a towel or blanket somewhere.

When I got home, he was mostly dry and he smelled great, like a clean puppy :)

That night, I was making chocolate-covered oreo's as favors for my sister's baby shower for the 45 people who RSVP'd. I had about 50 cookies dipped when my sister came over to help. I told her that her job was to keep Gunnar out of the kitchen. He was staying out of the kitchen and we had about five trays of freshly-dipped molten oreo's on the table, when Gunnar snuck past my sister. He went to investigate the cookies and sat on about five of the cookies and got chocolate in his fur !!!!

I did not want to bathe him twice that day, so I pinned him in the bathroom sink and wiped off al the chocolate I could and then got the rest off with a damp towel. Hopefully I got rid of enough of the chocolate. I just hope the dog doesn't lick him.

And yes, I threw all of those cookies off.

Bad kitty

I told Gunnar that he has three rules at our house:
1) Never go outside
2) Don't eat Katie's food
3) Don't cause destruction around the house (meaning don't claw the furniture and break things)

An hour or so after this talk I went to take Mojo outside to go pee. The dog and I are walking out the doorway and I see a sneaky kitty walking side by side with the dog outside. I screamed. I had visions of Gunnar running away into the night while Mojo ran the opposite direction and I had two pets loose in the dark neighborhood.

Thankfully I was quick enough to scoop up the kitty before he got to the shrub on the side of the porch (about two people-sized steps) and Mojo was good and didn't drag or pull me off like he could have. He just stood there and let me pick up the cat.

I turned around to take the cat back into the house and Matt (who had leg surgery last week) had left his crutches behind and quickly hopped over to the door to help.

"I have the cat," I said as I stepped inside.

I don't remember what Matt said to me, but I didn't think he saw the cat I was holding, so I said it again. I then gave the cat to Matt to hold when I took Mojo back outside to pee.

It was so scary. My heart is still racing. Gunnar just strolled outside alongside Mojo, like he was taking a walk with his best good friend. He wanted to see what was outside and what Mojo was doing that he didn't get to do.

We've had Gunnar four weeks. He's tried to get outside plenty of times. He's succeeded in getting in the closed garage a few times but this is the first time he's succeeded in getting outside. It just scares me to death that he will do it again. He's never been outside. Where would he run to? How would we find him? What if a car or delinquent child got to him. Oy.

I got Mojo back inside without letting the cat back out. I've since been recovering from the event. Gunnar waited a few minutes until he went to eat Katie's food.

I don't really know how to punish a cat so I told Mojo he had permission to lick Gunnar until the cat was unhappy.

Gunnar Destruction

I've decided that Gunnar's middle name should be destruction.

Here's a good example.

This evening I was doing some chores upstairs. I heard a big noise, like one of our baby gates being knocked over. With Matt on crutches I ran downstairs to see if he needed something. He hadn't even heard the noise so it was nothing downstairs, so I went looking for Gunnar.

I headed to the bedroom, where Gunnar had earlier strewn every single one of his toys across the floor. There I found the cat's three story kitty condo on its side. !?!? He'd manage to completely knock it over. And when he knocked it over, he knocked over the dressing mirror that was standing a few feet away. The mirror fell forward and onto the bed. Miraculously the the mirror didn't break, but OMG what utter destruction cat.

I went downstairs to tell Matt what happened. He asked how Gunnar was. I told him that I found him under the sideways mirrors staring in wonderment at his actions. And then, I heard Gunnar's favorite squeaky mouse. He was already playing in the condo again. He didn't miss a beat.

Total Conspiracy

Gunnar likes to sit in front of the downstairs bathroom mirror, stare at himself and CRY.

He does the time, but I still went to check on him. While I checked on him, the dog snuck over to my abandoned salsa bowl (forgot to put it up this time) and licked it clean.

Total conspiracy.