Cleaning up

I gave our cat a bath today. She was very tolerant and did not attack me, as I had feared. I had to do it since she had not really been keeping herself very clean recently. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that she had a lot of matted fur on her hindquarters. I started gently pulling them out, and soon most of them were gone. Apparently she was helping out.

But she still had something that looked like dandruff, felt a little grungy, and she had fleas. So I bathed her in the tub, filling it with a couple of inches of water, and I used flea/conditioning shampoo. She is silky smooth now, and all fleas are gone.

And she is a lot happier than she looks in this photo. She is next to me, purring, as I type.

My theory about the matted fur is that she may have been depressed about the loss of our other cat, who was hit by a car a few weeks ago. They weren't very close, but I think she was missing him.