Effects of the Bathroom
Graham and I have two cats, Dobie and Emerson. Graham adopted Dobie when we first started dating, and he's really been both of ours since then. He is such a great cat, he's huge (18 lbs), orange, nice, aloof, pretty, etc. He's had a rough life, kind of. He was abandoned by his original owners and brought to my vet, where we picked him up. We've had him for almost three years now, and enjoyed every minute. Its been interesting to get to know the odd quirks that he has, and try to figure out where they come from. Most odd of his quirks is that he gets really upset when either of us bathes. At our old home, we had a bathroom in our room, but it was only a tub, no shower. If either of us took a bath, Dobie would get very agitated, meowing at us with a concerned look on his face, looking over the side of the tub at the water, and eventually settling on the toilet, waiting impatiently for the bath to be finished. We liked to muse that maybe his old owner had a bad experience in the tub, maybe someone died in the tub and he's trying to warn us. Maybe he just doesn't like water. Who knows. I thought that when we moved the agitation over bathing would stop, but I have often been in the shower with Dobie giving me that same anxious meow from outside of the shower curtain.
Emerson is an insane, black siamese cat. Some acquaintances of ours found him meowing outside of their window on Halloween night last year, this tiny two week old black kitten. Though they didn't like cats and didn't want him, they took him in and he proceeded to act like a complete psychopath. He would run after them and attack their legs and feet, run around meowing at nothing, they could not hold him or pet him, and they thought that maybe Graham and I would like him. So we took him in, not realizing the extent of his craziness. At first I was worried that Dobie would hurt Emerson, Dobie has not been nice to other cats in the past, but Emerson is the one that terrorizes him. He's calmed down a bit, he cuddle with us now and doesn't act quite as insane, but, like Dobie, his behavior changes in the bathroom. Unlike Dobie, however, the bathroom soothes him, He likes to sleep in the bathroom, he purrs when I go into the bathroom with him, he likes to be held and cuddles in the confines of the bathroom. He sometimes jumps on my lap while I'm using the bathroom... but he's so cute, he turns from a devil into an angel in the bathroom. He also loves water, he likes to roll around the shower after one of us has bathed. He is so strange.
At any rate, getting to know the strange individual quirks of my animals is one of the greatest joys of my life. It makes me wonder about animals in the wild and what strange quirks those individuals might have. Having pets is great, and I feel bad for people who don't like animals.