Cat Towels

Photo: Normanack

So, it has come to this.  Our cats have more bath towels than we have.

It didn't start out that way, in fact for most of our lives we lived totally devoid of the knowledge there was such a thing as cat towels.  But that was long, long ago and another lifetime it seems.  Today and forever more we are bounded by cat towels.

Photo by Jamie in Bytown

What are cat towels you ask?  Well, to all intents and purposes they start out as regular human bath towels.  They will spend anywhere from several months to sometimes only a week in this part of their life cycle, but at some point on the towel horizon, they devolve into a steadily worse condition known as cat towel.

Here is transition of a human towel into a cat towel:

1. It starts as a newly purchased towel. It is freshly washed and folded and sitting on the bathroom shelf.
2. This freshly laundered towel is used, rewashed, dried then folded and is again sitting on the bathroom shelf.
3. Repeat part 2 until the following occurs:

•  A defect such as an unraveled seam or a mysterious hole or stain appears.
•  The towel is used to mop up something off the floor and acquires a hole or a stain, or has become 'tainted' from being on the floor too long or mopping up something too foul.
• The towel gets randomly recruited into cat use because there are no other towels available, or maybe just because it was easier to get to this one than one of the actual cat towels.
•  A case of mistaken identity (the towel looked too much like another cat towel).

Now that it has been designated a cat towel, this towel will be used in the following manner:

• used to line or cover a cat crate.
• placed on the cat floor area.
• placed on the dog floor area.
• placed on an interior floor area because it is wet.
• used to block drafts under the door.
• used to dry the washed car.
• used to mop up something foul.

Once used in this manner, the cat towel will languish in an unwashed state in a special cat towel laundry bin (or lumped in a pile beside the bin) outside on our back porch.  This period of languishing can last for a matter of days to weeks and then the cat towels are subjected to the following rigorous cleaning method:

• The towels are taken to the furthest part of our yard and shaken vigorously to remove cat debris, leaves, and various substances we will call 'cat cooties'.
• After shaking, the towels are left to further disinfect in sunlight, sometimes for days and perhaps even through several rain storms.
•  The pretreated cat towels are loaded into the washing machine and washed on hot along with    bleach for one cycle.
•  The towels are washed for a second cycle on hot.
•  The towels are rinsed for two cycles to remove all detergent/bleach.
•  The towels are dried in the hot dryer, then folded and placed on the special 'cat towel' shelf.

The cat towels will continue through the use and cleaning stages until they become so thin and threadbare you can read through them.  This whole cycle can take place over the course of a year or two to sometimes less than a month.  Eventually the towel is deemed too icky to actually use or clean and is thrown away.

Photo by: Djprybyl

This vigorous disinfection of the cat towels is so that - just in case we would actually have to use a cat towel for a human reason - we will not be inflicted with cat cooties.  Cat cooties are an undefined lingering 'catness' that no reasonable person would want on their body.

Our cats love the arrangement and so do our dogs.  There are probably no creatures in a 500 mile radius that appreciate thoroughly laundered towels as much as our crew.  If you put down fresh cat towels our feline crew will come running to roll decadently on the fresh new towel.  They will actually fight each other in order to lay claim to an especially wonderful towel. They get fresh cat towels at least once a week and the only thing that delays this is the overwhelming arduous burden of actually washing a load of cat towels.

To keep the washing scenario to a minimum we have lots and lots and lots of cat towels.  But because the process of washing cat towels takes so much effort, there are always lots and lots of cat towels desperately needing to be laundered. After all, it would be inhumane to leave our cats without a towel while we laundered cat towels and when we replace the used cat towels with those freshly laundered ones... well, we have just created more cat towels to wash.  Such a vicious cycle.

Photo by: Duffbert

Our dogs appreciate the cat towels as back porch towels that they use to wipe their feet on prior to coming inside (not that they actually wipe their feet, but the standing on the towel while you whine to get inside serves sort of that purpose).  They get cat toweled off when they come in from particularly wet or muddy prancing in the backyard.  They lounge on cat towels placed on the back porch in sunny areas.  They snuggle into cat towels on 'cold' days when we somehow can not hear how much they would prefer to be back inside because we are having something they would like to eat.

Photo by: Rockinfree

We don't actually use the cat towels to dry off our dogs after a bath.  Apparently dog cooties are not  harmful like cat cooties and we willingly share our towels with them without prejudice.  Mind you, immediately after toweling off the dog you don't want to mistakenly rub that towel anywhere on your body unless you want to wear some fur.  I just mean that we wash the dog towels the same as people towels.

Photo by: Hills_Alive

All this cat towel business means I purchase new towels at an alarming rate.  I can assure you there is very little difference in survivability from a high quality towel versus an economic towel in our system.  Before the cat towel era, I used to purchase high quality thick, plush bath towels and these by and large became in time, cat towels.

These days I don't purchase the most bottom of the barrel cheap towel because I would like to towel off with something thicker than a tissue paper and softer than steel wool, but I generally purchase just one step up from the cheapest.  Yes, some better quality towels remain human towels for longer, but it all ends in cat towels. Sooner or later it all ends there (sometimes for reasons of mistaken identity, much sooner than reasonable).  I can also say that the better quality towels linger in the cat towel sector for longer.  Sometimes I will run across one of the veterans and reminisce with it.  "Remember when you were brightly colored, thick and un-marred?" I say to the battered remains.  I may be the only person on the planet that suffers from towel nostalgia.

Photo by: shellac

I know that it is said that couples develop an interior language all their own.  I can certify that this is absolutely true.  When I or my husband say cat towel, we both know exactly the 'not fit for human use except in extreme need, yet totally necessary to our lives' item we are talking about.  Someday I expect to see it defined in the dictionary.