Kitty Crack?

Some of you know, that I took up swimming laps again this summer. We've got a community pool about 2 blocks from the house and they have adult lap swimming every weekday evening. Seeing as I've been on summer vacation, I thought I'd go back in the pool and see how well I could do. With these "STAGE 1 EMERGENCIES" possible, I may as well cool off at the pool while exercising. Last time I tried to ride my bike in the heat, I got a little bit of heat stroke when I stopped. The real tragedy was that I sat on my expensive cycling sunglasses and broke the nose piece. Dammit.

I've been putting in about 1/2 hour in the pool twice a week, usually swimming 1000 to 1200 yards. It's a short pool (25 yards) so I started with 50 yard sprints of three of the four competitive strokes, backstroke, breaststroke, and the Australian crawl. I tried butterfly once, and discovered, I'm way out of shape for that. I then remembered, my strongest events when I was a competitive swimmer were distance events like the mile (1650 yards) and 800 individual medley. So now when I go to the pool, I just swim back and forth until I get tired and take a break and swim again until I can't anymore, or I get bored.

As interesting as all this is, it's not the reason for this blog. But I had to set it up somehow. When I get home from swimming, I discovered our cat Kolohe goes nuts at the smell of chlorine.

Here's a picture of Kolohe in an acceptable serene state:


Now here's Kolohe when I come home from the pool and walk in the door. Pardon the little girl like screams, but he's got sharp claws and teeth!


That's my swimming towel that he ends up sitting on. Also covered in chlorine. He'll spend a good half hour rubbing up against my slippers too.

I did a little research on the internet to see why he acted this way. I thought (like many other people) that the chlorine odor, similar to catnip, made the cats drunk and doped up. Which was strange to me because our cats really don't like catnip. We've bought catnip toys and they just don't seem to care. Currently their favorite toy is the dogs tail.

In an online article, a smart veterinarian thinks that it's that the cat recognizes you, but you doesn't recognize your scent as their property, so the do all the things they have to do to remark you as theirs. An excerpt:

"The chewing/rubbing may be an attempt to rid your daughter of the alien smell of chlorine and reestablish Mickey's (The cat in the article, not some sicko)"ownership" of your daughter's head. (Cats have scent glands around their mouths. When they rub against things, they're marking their territories.)"

It's so nice I'm my cat's property.

Similarly, my younger brother had a cat in Hawai'i that would do the same thing after you showered. Which lends me to thinking that the vet is right about marking, and I'm not so right about the "kitty crack".

Cat's are strange creatures. But damn cute! So I will continue to suffer the scratches and teeth marks after a swim. And I'll continue to scream like a little girl.