Ladies and Gentlemen! Let me introduce you to our extreme sport of the weekend -

Vacuuming the cat!

This is Secret.

 Actually this is Secret's backside.

She is a moth-eaten, elderly feline with a flea allergy who lives in my office. More specifically, she lives on my desk. Unlike all the other cats in my life, who also started life in the house, Secret never chose to move outside.  Everyone else eventually decided that The Great Outdoors was THE place to be, but not Seek. No sirree!

Secret knew a good thing.  Air conditioning, central heating, what's not to love?

Over time she became too old to even consider tossing her outside where she would have to outrun dogs. It was commonly accepted that Secret lived in the house like a little princess. Actually, she is more like an elderly cranky dowager, with a long list of demands.

For instance:

Secret does not climb anything. She hides under things. Under the kitchen cabinets. Under the hutch. Under any crawl space too small for a rodent, Secret will hide.  Now mind you, she is not hunting.  Secret never has, nor will she ever be, a hunter.  (eewwww!)

When blogging, Secret WILL be sleeping/playing/scratching near or on the computer. She WILL jiggle the aircard thus interrupting internet connection. It is a given. Deal with it.

She insists upon a special kind of canned cat food - no chunks please.  Seek wants her food mushed and ground beyond all recognition. If is resembles a chunk of anything alive, do not attempt to serve it to her. She can have no red dye #2 or any other dye in her dry food. If you serve her such rubbish, she will promptly throw it up - on important papers, or the laptop.

While other creatures in the household are easily photographed, Secret is as elusive as Bigfoot.  I just scanned over seven years of photographs and she was not in one - not one!  Part of this is because she refuses to go outside with dogs and I really dislike taking flash photos inside the house.  (I have an adorable photo of Secret sleeping in a pasta bowl, but it's a 35 mm photo.  That is really one of the few good pictures of her.)  Most of the time I abandon attempts to shoot her because I end up with a fuzzy, out-of-focus face with two moon-shaped orbs for eyes.  Most unattractive.

This is about as good as it gets. Secret is not a fan of the flash.

Since we moved to the Cow Camp House, Secret has been living in my office. And since most of my things are crammed into that one room, there are lots of crawl spaces for her to enjoy.  That said, her favorite hang-out is still my desk - my precious desk.

My desk is a large antique partner desk with a green leather top. It's beautiful - when it's not covered in cat hair and dander.  I find that to be disgusting.  As she has aged, Secret has a tendency to get scabby skin around her throat  (flea allergy - one flea and she erupts into a fit of scabs and scratching) I try to keep her flea-combed and brushed regularly, but I cannot eliminate ALL of them, thus, each morning my desk is filled with cat dander.  Groossss!

So every morning I comb the cat, and vacuum my desk with a shop vac.  You see where this is going, don't you?

Yeah.  Well this morning I had the bright idea to take it one step further.  How about we just vacuum that crap off the cat BEFORE it ends up on my desk?  It sounded good in theory.

Now in the past, I've tried this before with a Bloodhound who also had flea allergies and skin problems. 

 Unfortunately I failed to take into account that when the vacuum cleaner sucks up dead skin flakes, it also sucks up folds of live Bloodhound skin, thus clogging the tube and horrifying the hound.  (sometimes I fail to think ahead)

But today, sick of vacuuming my desk for 6 months, I turned that tube on the cat. Even on a good day, Secret is a shy kitty. She will slither into hiding at the hint of a stranger.  What exactly was I expecting when I turned a shop-vac on her?

Certainly not what I got.

Secret is a big fan of petting.  She is familiar with the shop vac because it vacuums her desk each day. I began by vacuuming the desk, and petting the cat at the same time. It didn't take long before I was able to replace my hand with the vacuum cleaner tube. In no time, I was vacuuming the freakazoid cat!  Woo hoooo!  Success! 

Secret really enjoyed the vacuuming, but don't do her belly!  Head, shoulders, throat, sides, but do NOT DO HER BELLY!  Okay then. With the Dowager Rules established, we had a jolly good time.

I think I'll take up snowboarding next weekend.