Bandit came hurtling out of the bathroom, spraying water everywhere. Persephone flinched as a few droplets landed on her immaculate black coat. Well, formerly immaculate. With a sigh, she restarted the grooming ritual she had just finished, all the while wondering what had possessed her humans to get a dog.
“They just tried to drown me!”
“Pity they didn’t succeed.”
“What?”
If cats could roll their eyes, Persephone would have rolled hers. Instead, she just said, “Nothing,” and went back to her grooming.
“I don’t understand what I did to deserve that.”
Persephone could think of a whole list, starting with being a dog. Instead, she just said. “They never do that to me.”
“Why not?”
She stared at Bandit, ever in awe of the stupidity of dogs. “Because I wash myself.”
“What?”
“When you go outside, you always come back so dirty. You actually roll in shit. First of all, I don’t roll in shit. Second of all, I wash myself, so they never have a reason to bathe me.”
“Bathe me?”
“How are you still alive?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you seriously never realized that the humans always smell different when they come out of that room?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with drowning me?”
“They weren’t trying to drown you, they were trying to wash the stink off you. If you bathed yourself, you wouldn’t have that problem.”
Bandit thought about this for so long that Persephone finished her extensive bathing ritual and had just nodded off when Bandit stuck her nose in her face. “Persephone! Wake up!”
“What?”
“Can you teach me?”
“Can I teach you what?”
“How to do that thing so the humans won’t drown me.”
“Ugh. Seriously?”
“Pleeeeeeease.” Bandit gave her the Big Brown Puppy Dog Eye Treatment that always seemed to work on the humans. As much as Persephone liked to believe she was above such things, she had to admit she was curious to see if a dog was capable of bathing itself. If anyone could teach self-grooming to a dog, it would be Persephone.
She blinked groggily and looked herself over before saying, “Well, it has been more than an hour since my last bath, which means I should probably take another one. All right, watch me.”
The end.