Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: quixotic
  • Music: People. Typing. Tacka tacka tack.

Heat wave with cats.

My part of Northern California is currently experiencing its first really serious heat wave of 2011. I know better than to whine about this too much; by this point in the year, in a normal year, we'd be on heat wave three or four, and temperatures would be trending substantially higher than they are.

That being said, Thomas is only eleven months old, and this is actually the first really serious heat wave of his life. My house has air conditioning, but it doesn't run twenty-four hours a day, which means that it can get warm inside during the gaps. (Never dangerously warm. I am a good cat owner who does not bake her babies. But there's a big difference between "springtime cool" and "what is this shit?", especially when you've been genetically designed to go tromping around in heavy snow, mocking Jack Frost for his inability to nip at your nose.) Alice and Lilly are quietly miserable, but Thomas? Thomas is distressed.

Monday night, I got home from a hot, sweaty day at work, and promptly jumped into the shower, because sometimes, that's the only solution available to you. The Maine Coons thought so, too. In short order, I was joined in the shower by both Alice and Thomas, who splashed around in the water, got thoroughly drenched, and then took turns sitting on the plug so as to create a puddle for the other to swim in. Yes. My cats cooperatively filled the bathtub in order to have swampy funtimes.

After our shower, they squelched around the house like extras from Sigrid and the Sea Monsters until I chased them down and toweled them off. I think they're still annoyed about that. Sadly, their inability to understand "don't walk on keyboards while wet" is why they can't have a wading pool.

Heat wave with cats. It's going to be a long July.
Tags: alice, cats, silliness, thomas, weather woes
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  • 145 comments

citharistria

June 22 2011, 18:04:26 UTC 6 years ago

We had a heat wave in western WA (where AC is a rarity in apartments)... it got up to 107 and I had but one fan.

Solution: fill bathtub with cool water.

Locate cat #1. Capture cat #1. Dunk cat #1 in water. Make second, third, and fourth attempt to dunk cat #1 in water, each time getting a different section of cat wet. Perform cursory toweling of cat and extensive cataloging of damage to person.
Locate cat #2 (may take a while). Capture cat #2 (may take even longer, depending on how loudly cat #1 complained). Repeat dunking attempts, toweling, and injury cataloging.

Despite the effort and noise, it managed to keep kitties cool and occupied for the rest of the day while they groomed themselves... and me in smug satisfaction.

paksenarrion2

June 23 2011, 00:23:26 UTC 6 years ago

I remember that heatwave. Despite having a Maine Coon that loves water, it was just too damn hot in my apartment due to the fact that the power went out and ended up being out for 6 hours.

I bundled up Roarke into his kennel, got in the car and found a nice shady spot after going through a drive through to get dinner for me and a couple of bottle of water had grabbed a dish for him. Kept the car running with the A/C, let him out of the kennel and free to wander about the car and read a book for six hours. I ended up going through close to a half a tank of gas but it was worth it.

I probably could have suffered through the heat in my apartment but I wasn't going to put him through it. We got home and the power was back on. I let him get in the tub where he promptly got wet and wandered around the apartment and plopped in front of the running fans for the rest of the night.