Dust Bath

                Remember the scene in Scooby Doo (pick any episode, I think it happened in most of them) where someone falls in a barrel of flour and is then mistaken for a ghost?  Well, Jersey showed up at the back door this afternoon completely gray…completely…no black or white…gray.  I did a double take trying to figure out whose cat she was.  I don’t really know what she rolled in, since the dust around here usually turns the cats brown.  Whatever it was must have been wonderful because she kept at it long enough to penetrate through her thick coat to the skin.

Cement makes a great back scratcher

                Dust baths and cement back scratches are the kitty equivalent to spa day.  They surrender themselves wholly to the experience—tummies exposed, eyes closed, purring set on loud—writhing in utter bliss on the scratchy surface.  The resulting discoloration remains until they come inside and give their bodies a sharp twitch that releases the dust into the air like a puff of smoke--think Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip.

                This time of year makes for especially good rolling.  The cats’ fur and those wonderful dry, scratchy leaves come together like two sides of Velcro.  Sometimes the clowder comes inside looking like little leaf piles.  Then with their sharp twitch technique, they deposit their piles onto the living room carpet.  The smell of autumn leaves is nice, but leaves poking through my socks is something I can do without.  I guess that’s what vacuum cleaners are for!