A short story, or, sometimes cats are dumb.

Francis, feline though he may be, is fascinated by water. He loves nothing more (besides looking out the window) than drinking out of the running sink. He watches in fascination while I am washing dishes (this may be more because this action is so rare due to lack of dishwasher that he is shocked by it.) He waits patiently each morning (sometimes batting at the curtain or sticking his head in to signal that he is losing patience) while I shower so that he can explore the empty tub. Ordinarily, I let him hop in there after I'm done, he walks around, attacks the shower curtain a little, and leaves.

I must provide the caveat that my tub is currently draining slower than it ought - I need to get some draino. But that is not the point of this tale. So I have recently just been shoo-ing him away from the shower til all the water is drained out. (You might be able to see where this is heading.)

So this morning while I am brushing my teeth, Francis manages to sneak into the bathroom undetected, thanks to his cat stealth. (*shout out to anyone who remembers the episode of the O.C. where Seth gets drunk and then claims to be "stealth" before falling across Ryan's car.) I am brushing away happily when I hear the following:

"SPLASH"

Curiousity, as they say, kills the cat - or, in this case, severely dampens him. I turned to see that Francis was frozen halfway between sitting and standing, with an expression on his face that said "what the..." (Not that he should have been surprised at the outcome of his decision given his usual habit of staring into the tub at the water draining before leaping in. As noted in the title, cats are sometimes dumb.)

He then attempted to sit, acting as though he had meant to jump into a giant puddle. He quickly reconsidered this and decided to try and get his footing to leap out, but the water made this a real challenge. By this point I had rinsed the toothpaste out of my mouth (didn't want to swallow the stuff and be poisoned - priorities) and got a towel to capture the cat, who lept from the tub into said towel. I then spent ten minutes rubbing him with the towel, then drying his tail, legs, and half his tummy with the hairdrier (in attempt to prevent damage to our new white bedspread.) You can imagine how much we both enjoyed this.

I didn't even bother trying to explain why I was slightly late to work this morning.