Further tales from Mr Hugo’s House of Grooming…

My cats are strange …. which if you’ve read any of this blog in the past you’ll know already… you may also recall that Hugo has a fascination for all things related to human grooming and hair care….(unlike his mother whose only contribution is to eat the “hair spiders” that I remove from the comb to make herself sick…. revolting creature!)

Hugo’s biggest grooming fads (well until this morning) are to comb my hair… which usually happens as I am trying to get to sleep…. he perches on my back, extends his claws and drags them through my hair…. if I don’t react he will continue with this, getting more and more into it until he gets carried away and sticks his claws into my head…. at which point he usually gets turfed off the bed…

The other thing he does is to pluck my eyebrows …. he will place his paws either side of my eyes (at which point I tend to either lie very still or remove him straight away depending on how awake I am) and then gently with his teeth pull out individual eyebrow hairs…. well hair… I am not big on the whole eyebrow plucking thing anyway, and done by the cat is just freaky as well as painful!

He’s also very partial to hair dye…. Not sure why, I am sure that the horrible ammonia/chemical smell of it would put any normal cats off and keep the far away… but no, not Hugo…. The closer he can get the better… though I have learnt my lesson and when my hair dye is developing he is not allowed to sit on my shoulder … (as an aside – have you seen the tattooed sphynx cats on the net? I am pretty sure it’s not a permanent tattoo they put on them, but really, no, too weird, even for me)… I do have to put the packaging from the hair dye straight in the bin as he has in the past ripped open the box to get to the left over chemicals.

This morning however I discovered that he has got over his fear of the hair dryer…..it, along with the vacuum cleaner, used to send him and his mother scurrying under the nearest duvet… alas not anymore! Now I am not one for usually drying my hair… its combination of not having time in the morning, having boring straight hair that doesn’t really require styling and, erm, my ability to blow up hair dryers… I mean seriously, they are such fragile things, you have them on for a couple of minutes and they are either smoking on the back end, going bang and tripping the electrics or setting themselves alight, and trying to take the carpet with them…..  I am sure it really isn’t just me that can make them do this!

Usually I will only bother drying my hair if it is freezing outside and I am going to have to go scrape ice off the car (frozen hair defrosting as you sit at the desk in the office is seriously unpleasant) but today, what with the cold, I decided what they hell I had time I might as well take the worst of the water out my hair. 

So as I flipped myself upside down (no not my whole self, just my head, be sensible here), switched on the dryer .... and was joined by Hugo… who kept trying to pull the hair dryer down towards him… so I blasted him to get rid of him, a bit of hot air, totally harmless……. Only it didn’t get rid of him… he basked, he tarted about under the hot air, he scratched all down my hand when I tried to go back to drying my hair……. after a small battle of wills, which was only partially won when I stood up… he refused to be defeated though and climbed up my back onto my shoulder…. I got my hair dry (ish)… I left the stupid cat curled up around the hot hair dryer impatiently tapping the end of it with his paw….. I did turn unplug it from the socket.