Scrolling through Instagram, I came across a video of cats being bathed in water by their owners. Some of the animals were docile and cooperative. I commented to my daughter Tammie, “Are these cats for real? And why do the cat owners think cats need baths?”

Tammie defended cat bathing, “Hairless Sphinx cats need to be bathed. They have body oils that need to be washed away. They don’t have hair like other cats, which wicks oil off the skin. There are also other cats with hair like Turkish Vans that enjoy being in water.”

 Unconvinced, I pointed out, “Some cats might like baths, but most turn into screeching, shredding, high-speed rockets whenever someone tries to put them into water. Didn’t you and your sister Niki try to bathe one of our cats when you were kids?”

Nodding, my daughter admitted, “Yes. We tried to bathe Berry.”

Remembering our cat Berry makes me smile. My eight- and twelve-year-old daughters and I found him as an older kitten along our country road one late summer afternoon. We named him Berry because he had been hiding under an elderberry bush.

Our ten-year-old tom cat named Flicker made very little fuss when we added this new feline to the household menagerie. After a while, the two cats grew to like each other so much that they often slept curled around each other. Both cats were tuxedo cats, so it was hard to tell where one cat started and the other left off. They resembled one big furry kitty puddle.

Someone once asked me how I could tell Flicker and Berry apart. While they did look alike from a distance, with a closer look it was easy to see that Flicker had black fur on his nose and muzzle, while Berry had white fur in those places.

One day when Berry was still a new member of the family, and we were playing with him in the backyard, he showed us his belly for scratches and pets. He was happy and comfortable, so he stretched and rolled around on the dusty driveway. His crisp looking white fur picked up dust and grass clippings from the lawn. Niki and Tammie decided their new kitty needed a bath. I stated, “Cats don’t need baths.” The girls insisted that the cat would love being washed clean in a bath. I retorted, “We never bathed cats on the farm I grew up on.”

Niki pointed out, “The cats on the farm didn’t live in the house with you.” I had to admit, she was right.

My daughters’ torturous, misguided good deed was carried out in the family bathtub. Niki took charge by putting warm water in the tub and having mild shampoo handy. I took a general’s position behind the infantry, so I couldn’t see firsthand everything that happened. Poor Berry screeched, and I heard a lot of scrabbling. The girls were screaming and laughing. A struggle to rinse the soap off was followed by the dripping wet creature zipping past me. What I saw didn’t look like a cat, it more resembled a gremlin with wide, wild, panic-stricken eyes.

Looking up from the Instagram video of a cat enjoying a bath, I asked my daughter Tammie, “What do you remember about the time you bathed our cat, Berry?”

Tammie said, “I remember that he didn’t like having a bath. He was scared and his wet, matted-down fur made him look like a gremlin. I never saw the Gizmo movie that was in theaters at the time, but I saw the previews. When Berry escaped the tub, he shot straight up. I don’t know what he got his claws into to be able to do that. All he had to work with was the hard plastic shower wall. The shower curtain was behind us.”

My cat-washing infantry escaped the ordeal with drenched shirts, several snags in their clothing and a few scratches. Fortunately, no one lost an eye. Neither daughter ever volunteered to bathe our cats after that.