I rescued Lychee from underneath a waste collection vehicle on the streets of Nanjing, China. His head was tilted sideways and he was walking around in circles while at the same time looking up at me with his big eyes. This little kitten was so curious about the world around him. During the next 5 months he went through many challenges, spending more than a month at the vets, survived FPV, needed artificial blood, and he had surgery while extremely weak. Somehow he came out of the other side of this adventure with his bundles of curiosity still intact.
Lychee has battled skin disease for most of his life. Compared to his chronic bronchitis, fight against FPV, Herpes and other conditions, Skin disease is the lesser of his battles. After trying oral medicine and other topical skin disease medicines from the vets, without much luck, it was time for a visit to the pet wash shop. Here in China most pet shops also have grooming services and some even board your pets while you go on holiday.
I wasn’t very keen on Lychee having a wash, he has chronic bronchitis and is so small and delicate. Even though I was a bit nervous, we knew it could ease his skin disease a little bit. When we arrived, we planned to take Teeny our corgi for a wash at the same time, but they only had one member of staff washing and it would have been a long wait so we chose to only give Lychee his medicinal wash. They began by washing him using a special shampoo. Lychee meowed and cried throughout most of this part of the wash, as you’ll see in this photos and the video of how wash, which I’ll link to later in this article.
After getting soaked in medicine and water, the lady used a towel to dry Lychee. This part of the experience isn’t much fun either, she was experienced, handling him gently but with purpose, moving him around to soak up as much water is possible into the towel. Lychee is used to being handled by people giving him medicine daily, cleaning wounds and performing all sorts of tests. Maybe this is why he was also a little unhappy being hand dried with the towel.
After the towel dry it was time to bring out the big pet hair dryer. When we take our Corgi Teeny out and she gets wet we often dry her with a towel and hairdryer. Lychee is very curious about where the air is coming from, especially when it blows little specks of hair along the floor. For a while one of his favourite hobbies was to chase specks of dust and hair along our wooden floor, focusing with all his attention of catching them and baffled when they floated away. If we accidentally faced the hairdryer directly at him he would jump with his super cat reactions, unsure what had just happened.
After the big air blowing tube, it’s time for Lychee to have his hair combed. Plenty of fur comes off in the brush and his coat is looking much smoother and cleaner afterwards. We comb Lychee at home quite often and he quite likes the sensation of being pampered.
The air blower dries animals pretty well, but most pet shops in China also have a drying machine that slowly and gently dries animals, to make sure they are completely dry and don’t catch skin disease, if they haven’t already got it. I found it strange seeing my Corgi teeny in one of these machines the first time she went for a wash and dry, but I’m used to them now and cats and dogs seem to relax while inside them, maybe they feel safe in the small enclosed space.
It didn’t take long for Lychee to relax and have a little nap inside the drying machine. It was soon time to wake him up though and bring him home. He was tired after this new experience but no matter how tired he might be he always has the energy to pick up his toy in his mouth and drag it across the floor to us, asking us to play. We filmed Lychee having his first wash, here is the video if you’d like to watch it and below is a donation form for donor box, if you’d like to support Lychee and our other rescue animals. We would also love to hear about your experiences with cats having skin disease and if you have any tips. Thank you very much.