Felix's Lemonade Stand

I learned something today in the way of animal grooming- if a cat is too fat to lick its own back, it turns gross.
My grandma's cat, Abigail, is huge. Like 35 pounds or something huge. And as a fat animal, she cannot for the life of her reach certain places to clean herself, including but not limited to her lower back by the base of her tail. When cats cant clean themselves, their fur gets all matted up, causing the skin underneath to hold in dirt and flake like no other. Oh yeah, and she stank something fierce.
The time came that she NEEDED to be taken to a groomer. So my wonderful father volunteered me to grab the cat (always fun) and WRAP her in a towel (also fun), then CARRY her down to the CAR and HOLD ON to her the entire ride there.
After much fuss and a few back claws in my shirt, i got her situated on my lap and tried my damndest to reassure her and keep her calm. Remember, I'm the evil monster holding her in there, I gotta do something so that she doesnt eat me or my appendages.
Finally we get to the groomer. My dad tells me to HOLD ON and WAIT inside this car with a cat wrapped in a towel who suspiciously smells like urine. So I wait. And wait. 15 minutes goes by, I'm still waiting. The car is getting hotter, cat fur sticking to me, I'm sweaty, cat's panting, and the overwhelming aroma of urine. Just about 20 minutes rolls by, I suddenly become a genius and roll down the damn window, allowing sweet fresh air to waft into my miserable sinuses and cool my drenched, fur matted face and arms. The cat takes this oppurtunity to try and JUMP out the window. I'm a pretty strong guy, but man was it a fight to keep her in the vehicle.
Eventually my dad comes out and tells me to bring her inside. Somehow I manage to get out of the car keeping the cat burrito intact (concerned over those devilish back claws) and bring her into the groomer, a small old lady with gray spaghetti hair. I set the cat down and the groomer asks me, So what are we doing today, just a bath? I'm thinking, what the hell was Dad doing here the last half hour? Playing parcheezy? So I answer with a big, dumb, I dunno.
So she starts to comb out all the dead fur thats matted up on Abigail's back and rear. She's got the cat's head in what I can only describe as a nylon cat noose attached to a metal rod that's mounted on the edge of this table, and this nylon deal is NOT long enough to reach the floor. So when Abigail makes a break for it, all I see is my grandmother's cat hanging by her neck from this thing, and my stupid ass trying to save it, all the while getting the shit scratched out of me. Needless to say, this gave me the willpower to hold on to the cat REAL tight.
Sometime later, she finishes combing out all the dead fur, and it looks like a whole other cat's worth of fur was just pulled out with this magical comb. For a minute my dad started comforting a dead pile of fur before I told him that wasn't Abigail. (Yeah, the devil inside told me to just let him be, but I cant let him lose his sanity yet.)
So we take the cat over to the bathtub, and I ask the groomer, You got it from here? She replies, Well I may need you to hold onto her while I wash her down. I'm thinking, this bitch better give us a discount or something, making ME do an assistant's job...
We wash her down. Soap up with this HORRIBLE smelling stuff, lather her up, then rinse her off, all the while MY job was to keep rubbing her ears to keep her calm. (The cat, not the groomer.) We get her rinsed and the groomer finally takes over complete control and picks this monster of a cat up in a towel to dry her off. I step back to take a look at myself, and there I am: drenched up to the chest in cat-bath water, fur ALL OVER my arms, chest, face, and neck, cat piss all over my lap, I'm sweating my ass off from holding down this animal in a bathtub filling with hot water, it was horrible. I smelled like Steven Tyler after rough sex with an unshaven Lady Gaga. It was THAT bad.
The groomer sets the cat down and pulls out this nozzle attached to what appears to be a mounted vacuum cleaner, and proceeds to dry her off with the hot hair emitting from the nozzle. Of course my job is to hold the cat down again (you know by now the cat has not only figured out all of my physical restraining techniques, but is also tired of having them practiced on her and is figuring out ways to defeat me at this.)
I load the cat up after all is done, I have the wonderful task of HOLDING the cat ALL the way back home (at least SHE doesn't smell like her own piss), and have never been more glad to set a cat down on the kitchen floor in my life.


Did I mention the cat pissed all over me on the ride there?