Hello, I’m Max!
I’m going to tell you all about how Old-Style Siamese cats keep clean.In this picture on the left, I was just 2 ½ weeks old. I couldn’t even walk yet. All I could do was roll around in the kitten nest with my brothers and sisters. I could wave my paws and nip a little bit when I wanted to tease my brother Roger. It didn’t hurt him, though, because I didn’t have any teeth yet and neither did he! I could nurse from Mama, but I couldn’t go to the litter box by myself. I look white and pink and clean all over, though, don’t I? That’s because Mama licked me off several times every day. She also licked my bottom after every meal. When Mama licked my bottom, that made me pee and poop. Then, Mama would lick up all the mess. That sounds awful, I know, but cat mamas love their babies so much that they don’t mind doing that at all. It wouldn’t work for people, but it really works for us cats. Little kittens stay very clean and dry and happy as long as they have their mamas to look after them.
I’ll tell you something I bet you didn’t know. Cats have bristles on their tongues! Mama’s tongue had bristles on it, too, just like a hair brush! It felt nice and warm on the back of my neck. It also scratched my itchy spots just right. It felt so good!
In the picture, left, that’s me and my sister Voxi in the middle. Roger is on the left in back and my sister Kimba is on the right in back. Voxi is licking my face. We were about six weeks old by this time. We were all able to use the litter box by ourselves. We could lick each other off. We could also lick ourselves off until we were completely clean. Mama didn’t have to bathe us with her tongue any more, but she often did anyway because she loved us. Licking with the tongue is the main way that cats of all ages keep clean. We use our tongues to remove dirt and also to remove fleas and other pests. We lick so much and so often that we use up a lot of water every day just licking! That is one of the reasons that cats need to have a bowl of water they can drink from whenever they want to, day or night.
One way to tell when a cat doesn’t feel good is by looking at the cat’s coat. A sick cat will not lick himself off as much as he needs to and pretty soon his fur will stick out funny and look dirty. A sick cat can get fleas, too, very, very fast. In just one week a sick cat can go from having no fleas at all to having zillions of fleas—and that is true even if the sick cat stays indoors in a clean house! You see, even in the cleanest house, there are sometimes a few fleas wandering around. They sneak into the house from outdoors through cracks and windows. They also jump on people outdoors and ride into the house without people seeing them! Cats need to lick themselves off several times every day, so they can remove a flea if one tries to jump on the fur. A sick cat may not remove fleas every day—and even one flea can have many baby fleas so fast that soon the sick cat is covered with fleas! If you see that your cat is not licking his fur every day and that his fur is looking funny and dirty, then you should tell your mother or your father right away.
In the picture at left, you can see two adult cats. The big one, Ella, is licking the smaller one, Mia. Just like kittens, adult cats can give themselves a bath by licking—and sometimes they will lick other cats off as a favor. Adult cats that lick each other every day are usually very good friends. By licking each other, they are helping each other stay clean and healthy.
I think you can see now that cats are very good at keeping clean just by licking. Because cats have little bristles on their tongues, they can keep their fur brushed by licking, too! Some cats with very long, thick fur might not be able to keep their fur brushed well enough using just their tongues. Longhaired cats need to be brushed by the people they live with every day. But Old-Style Siamese cats have very short, smooth fur. We don’t need to be brushed by people or bathed by people usually. People sometimes brush us with a flea comb to make sure we don’t have any unwanted fleas. That’s a good idea, but a bath usually is not very good. Giving Old-Style Siamese cats a bath can make the fur and skin too dry. Besides, most of us cats hate baths! Yuck!
Once in a very long while an Old-Style Siamese cat like me might get into a big mess by accident. If that happens, we need to have just one bath to get all the messy stuff off. Here is how it happened to me. When I got to be a big kitten, my brother Roger and I went to live with some nice people named Karen and Nick. Mostly we lived in the house with them, but occasionally they would let us run around the garage while they were working in there. They thought we would not get into any trouble in the garage, but they forgot that we Siamese are little devils!
Ha, ha, ha! We had a really good time when we were in the garage. We ran around. We chewed on a pile of sticks. We poked into all the shadows to see what was there. Here I am in the picture on the left, chewing and chewing.
Then Roger and I found a big bag of dirt. Wow, that was great! We jumped on it, playing “king of the hill.” We found a hole in the bag and we played “ground squirrel,” digging the dirt out of the bag really fast and scattering it all around. The dirt had a funny smell, but we thought it was really neat stuff to play with. We didn’t know we were playing with fertilizer.
Karen and Nick went to pick us up to give us each a hug. Suddenly, they said, “Pee-yew! Stinky cats! Look at you; you’re covered with fertilizer dirt! You can’t come back into the house like this because you will get the whole house dirty and smelly! Boys, you have to take a bath right now!”
Then it happened. Nick turned on the water in the garage sink. He filled the sink with lukewarm water and in Roger and I went, one at a time. Aiyeeee!!!!!!
Karen stood by ready to dry us off with a big, soft towel. They were both very gentle and careful not to hurt us, but the bath was HORRIBLE!!! Look at Roger in the picture there at the left. Doesn’t he look miserable? He looks just like a big wet rat. We NEVER want to take another bath!!!
So that’s my story. If one of us Old-Style Siamese gets into something really messy and stinky, then we might have to have a bath to get cleaned up again. But most of the time we can stay perfectly clean by licking ourselves off with our tongues. We would much rather lick ourselves clean than have to take a nasty bath. Please help us out by keeping bad, messy things out of our reach. We like to play, but we are much happier playing with nice clean sticks and nice clean mousie toys. Okay? Thank you, that’s all I wanted to say. Sincerely, Max.
Maxwell (left) and Roger, nice and clean and dry.