The Naked Cat & the chilli.....

Oh dear, poor Hugo.....

Earlier on today, in an unusual fit of organisation, I decided to do some cooking to fill up the freezer with easily defrosted and re-heated meals, and to get a head start on some things to take for lunch.... So I made some bulgar wheat salad, potato salad, a load of vegetable & lentil soup and finally put a large Quorn curry into the slow cooker......

(Finally I made a large tub of fruit salad to pick on during the week....... alas said fruit salad was a tricksy thing and at one stage not vegetarian.... until I re-washed the grapes which I'd managed to bleed over when taking them off the stalk... having been viciously attacked by the sharp knife I was using to cut the melon into chunks just before hand)

The Quorn curry has in it fresh ginger, garlic and chilli's..... which were the last thing I cut up and threw into the pot before switching it on..... being as it was then feeding time for the critters I flung wings at the dogs and went up to deal with the demands of the naked ones.....

Deciding to check my e-mails whilst I was upstairs I was swiftly joined by Hugo who insists on clambering all over me, the desk, the keyboard etc.... he's doing it now, I can't actually see the screen as he's stood in front of it tapping on my fingers as I type...  So being an obliging serf to their needs I gave him the obligatory cuddle and he rubbed himself all over my hands.........

I was still pottering about upstairs half an hour later when he gave a very distressed sounding yowl and started shaking his head.... there was saliva frothing at his mouth which he started clawing at.....I thought for a second that he was going to have a fit..... I got hold of him and laid him on a towel just in case but his eyes were normal and he was showing no other signs..... he was just very distressed........ As I was trying to calm him his mother jumped up next to him and went to head-butt my hand, but then sniffed and drew away in disgust..... which was when it twigged.... the poor cat was covered in the residue from the chilli which had transferred to, well, all over him as I'd been stroking him.

So how do you remove chilli from a naked cat's body??...... I ended up basically covering him in plain yoghurt (it was either that or bathing him in milk but I didn't have enough)...... really, seriously messy, as I couldn't keep him still.... thankfully I'd thought first to shut him in the bathroom to do it, but still, it went everywhere....... then I rinsed him off in some very mild kitten shampoo.... Given that it's freezing and he has no coat, I then had dry him off with the hair dryer.... which whilst it appears he likes to come try get under it when I am doing my hair it's a totally different story when it comes to being dried himself.....

He seems to have forgiven me now...... but he's sniffing very carefully at my hands before I am allowed stroke him........ the curry was nice though.....