Years ago, when Dear Hubby and I were dating, my Siamese tangled with a skunk.  Dad told us to bathe her in tomato juice—the known ‘cure’ for the odor back then. 

     Now Snoopy never weighed more than seven pounds in her entire life.  However, when DH and I went to bathe her, you would’ve thought she was ten times larger and weighed over a hundred pounds.  She hated the whole idea of a bath and this cat was not declawed.  The results looked like something out of the cartoons.

     DH ran to the store and bought several large cans of tomato juice.  We hauled out a large galvanized tub and filled it with said tomato juice.  Then he caught Snoopy and walked over to the tub intent on putting her in it for her bath.  Her toe touched the liquid and her claws raked his arm.  She shot out of his grasp.  It took another fifteen minutes to recapture her.  This time DH had leather gloves on his hands.  He tried to put her in the tub, her legs stretched out, four feet of claws hooked on the edges of the tub, and no matter how much he tried she wasn’t going in there.  Picture that cartoon cat here.  I’d get one paw unhooked and she’d snag the edge of the tub with it as soon as I went for another paw.  We had more tomato juice on us than she did.  In fact, she was dry as an old bone.

     New plan, we had to find some way to keep her from hooking her paws on the edges of the tub.  I went into the house, grabbed an old pillow case, and we bagged her with only her head sticking out of it.  By this time, Snoopy was howling and you’d have thought we were killing her.  Truth is a few of the neighbors came over to see what all the noise was.  Now we had an audience.

     Have you ever tried to wash a bagged cat?  She knew what we were about to do.  Not even dunked yet, her shrieks had our audience in the giggles.  We dunked her and scrubbed the tomato juice in as best we could.  Then while DH held her over the tub, I rinsed her with buckets of warm water.  Snoopy was screaming like a banshee.  Rinsed, disgusted, and transferred from the pillowcase to a towel she had had enough.  She hissed at DH, leapt from the towel I had her wrapped in, and dashed into the house to hide under my bed.

     Although the smell was not strong, it took a year for the odor to leave.  Cats have hollow hair.  Every time she got wet, she stank of skunk.

 Snoopy relaxing on her favorite fake lambskin–she was about 17 here.