To combat the dry winter air in my apartment, I had run the shower on hot and let it fill up the tub. I then left it overnight to try and humidify the place. I’ve done this before lots of times.
Pepper has never shown any interest in the bathtub before. She has seen me in the tub and never even sniffed around, so I never even thought anything could happen.
Well, I was wrong.
I woke up this morning to an odd noise – sort of a scrabbling, I decided I might as well see if she had knocked something down or something, and couldn’t find her at first.
Then I found her half paddling half floating in the cold water!
I grabbed her out and toweled her dry as best I could (it took 2 towels!) then I started with the blow-dryer. I got most of her back and head dry and was starting on her tummy when she came out of her shock and decided she could handle the rest herself.
I have no idea how long she’d been in there – it could have been hours! Her ears were pretty cold and she was definitely VERY glad to see me. It was deep enough that her back feet could just touch the bottom but she had no traction and couldn’t get out.
I tried to dry her some more but the bit my shoulder HARD, so I settled for getting her to sit on a medium heating pad until her ears were room-temp again.
She took a good long nap this afternoon but is eating, pooping, and playing chase-the-Roomba again, so hopefully all she got out of this was a really bad scare. I will take her to the vet at the first sign of a sneeze.
I, on the other hand, probably lost a couple of years off my life!