A one-sided groomer?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

As some of you recall, I posted a few months back about Kidley being lethargic and not grooming, and a change of food helped tremendously, but now two new odd behaviors have emerged:

1. He grooms himself only on one side. His right side is smooth and silky, while his left side tends to mat, even though I comb him every day. This really struck me yesterday, when I visited a friend who has two fluffy, unmatted long-haired cats.

2. He has developed a love for the bathtub, including licking around the drain when it's wet. I try to discourage that, because of course, the remaining water contains soap, and it makes him, well, messy, unable to make it to the litterbox quite in time. I have been showering at the gym lately, so the tub is dry, and there have been no icky accidents. But he still sits in the bathtub whenever I'm in the bathroom, staring up at the faucet. This is in spite of the fact that he always has fresh water available in the kitchen.

Has anyone encountered this kind of behavior before, or is it just another example of Cats Being Weird?

[TorchTheWitch]

1. All three of my dogs prefer to drink from the tub faucet

And none of them were even alive at the same time. The one I have now at least knows HOW to drink from a water bowl, but even if I put fresh water in his cleaned and sterilized straight out of the dishwasher water bowl he'll still go to the bathtub faucet, and if I don't turn it on for him he'll turn it on himself (though just like the two dogs before him, he won't turn it off when he's had his drink).

The first dog would tip a water bowl over and lick the water off the floor. The only way I could get him to drink out of the bowl was to keep it in the bathtub right under the faucet and he'd have to see me run water in it from the faucet (even if it was already full) before he'd drink it. I tried and tried to get him to drink out of the bowl by putting it outside the tub and right next to it, but he'd have none of it... even when he watched me fill it from the tub faucet.

The next dog just flat out wouldn't drink from a bowl. But instead of tipping it over and licking the water off the floor, he'd give it a confused look, turn around and very delicately and deliberately lower is big hairy ass all the way in the bowl and look at me proudly. And then a lot of times he'd march his big sponge-like water soaked butt to my bed and triumphantly sit on my pillow. The stinker.

Yoshi, the dog I have now, will drink from a bowl if he can't get in the bathroom to turn on the faucet and there's nowhere else to get a drink from other than the water bowl... he'll always check the toilet and the kitchen sink first before he'll condescend to drink from his bowl. Strangely enough though, he'll drink from his outside water bowl quite unconcerned when he's in the yard and doesn't feel like coming inside for a drink. He'll also drink the most disgusting water like from puddles that have been standing for a couple of days, mud puddles where the water is really liquid dirt, the foulest and most revolting polluted creek, etc. Somehow this all makes perfect sense to him.

I'll never ever understand the weirdness of all of my dogs about their drinking preferences and habits. But I think what's even more weird is getting so accustomed to the weirdness that it becomes perfectly normal every day stuff you don't even think to consider.

As for the one-sided grooming... that's odd. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it pains the cat to have to turn and contort themselves in that direction to lick on that one side? Or maybe the one-sided grooming and licking from the tub drain are just weird preferences like my dogs and their insistence on drinking from the tub faucet.

Dogs and cats just do the kookiest things sometimes... but I think that's all part of what makes them so endearing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I keep thinking of an old Dennis the Menace cartoon from when I was a kid

Dad has gotten up in the middle of the night to bring Dennis a glass of water, and Dennis says, "That's bathroom water. I want kitchen water!"

The reason I remember that cartoon is that my brothers and I could tell that bathroom water and kitchen water actually tasted different.

Maybe something similar is going on with Kidley.

[meti57b]

3. Yes, one of my three cats prefers to lick the water from anything it spills on.......

rather than drink it out of a bowl. I have out several large bowls of water which i keep fresh. If I happen to spill a couple of drops when I set it on the floor, .... the cat runs over and starts licking the floor. He acts like licking the wet bathtub is his favorite treat. I usually close him out of the bathroom until the bath tub dries.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Yes, if I spill some dry food when pouring it into his dish

he goes and eats up the spilled pieces in preference to what is in the dish.

Cats Being Weird.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. The water thing isn't so odd, at least for a cat.

One of mine must drink from the bathroom sink. At first I thought this was just a temporary quirk, that maybe she just liked sitting in the sink, but now I understand that it's the water. I discovered this in the process of doing some home remodeling - the bathroom has been relocated and there is a new and entirely different sink. As soon as the new bathroom became operational and Pixie discovered that the new sink produced water like the old one (and didn't even require her to drink with water running over the back of her head), she hopped up there whenever she heard me set foot in the bathroom. Every time I use the bathroom she comes running, from wherever, jumps up into the sink and demands water.

She gets the occasional surprise, though, since Milo has decided the sink is a good place to sleep on a hot day.

As to Kidley's lopsided grooming, it may be that he has some kind of crick in his neck that makes it uncomfortable to turn to that side. You might ask about it at the next vet visit. If the mats are really bad you might have to take him to a groomer - - I can give you the name of one of the few groomers in Minneapolis who actually has the guts to take cats.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I bought a glass dish for water the other day, and I keep it in the bathtub on top of the drain

I fill it from the bathtub faucet.

It is his preferred source of water.