Friday 22 March 2019

What are you chewing on, cat?

This morning as I waited for Their Ladyships to get their acts together, I sat on the couch in the wan hours of dawn and watched the cat play with something.

This is not unusual; he is a cat, after all. His preferences lie with certain objects like ping pong balls (because they roll), hair ties and elastic bands (because they, um... stretch) and My Little Ponies (because he's... a Brony?). He has also been known to chew up Loom Band bracelets and the remains of party balloons. Loves them, actually.

If you may recall from a few weeks ago, His Grace learned how many things are difficult when one is missing a functional thumb.

One of those thing is bathing. Until the graft healed, he had to shower with his entire right hand encased in a plastic bag, taped for waterproofness. Not only did this make his life awkward, but also meant his hand wasn't getting cleaned.

After a couple of weeks he asked his thumb therapist if there was anything he could do about his unwashed hand. The thumb therapist told him that for the purpose of washing his hand (only!!, no full shower or dishwashing or watersports), he could encase his thumb in a condom, securing it with an elastic band.

No problem. Condoms are easy enough to source in Australia, so he procured one and secured it to his thumb in the proscribed manner. He proceeded, much to his relief, to wash the rest of his hand. This was done as needed, and the rest of the time he washed the rest of His Grace, he still bagged up his hand.

The condom was removed, placed in a secure place on the bathroom bench and reused as required. This is one of the only two purposes I know of when it is advised to reuse condoms. (The other being to keep the sand out of the end of your military rifle when at war in the desert.) So yeah, he hung on to that condom.

Back to this morning. The cat is playing with something on the floor. Looked like a hair band, or was it a balloon?

As my morning brain attempted to parse this strange object, he pinned it down with a paw, grabbed a bit, and puuuullled!  Boy, could it stretch, then it snapped back.

Only then did I recognise it.

No, cat, you may not chew on a condom.

No comments: