catbath

See also: cat bath and cat-bath

English

Alternative forms

• cat bath, cat-bath

Etymology

From cat +‎ bath.

Noun

catbath (plural catbaths)

1. A session of grooming, in which a cat cleans its own fur or that of another cat using its tongue.
   • 2004, Dana Kramer-Rolls, The Way of the Cat, →ISBN:

     After a while, I wondered where Iggy had gotten to. I found him in the empty tub, taking a cat bath, his leg luxuriously up in the air being scrubbed tongue clean. I guess he wanted a “real” bath where mommy takes hers.

   • 2011, L. J. Smith, The Forbidden Game, →ISBN:

     She slept. And dreamed, pleasantly. She was a cat. Not a repulsive scroungy cat like Jenny's, but an elegant Abyssinian. She was curled up with another cat, getting a cat-bath.

2. (figurative) A quick wash by wiping or dabbing the skin, especially of one's face.
   • 1971, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan, →ISBN:

     He hitched himself over to the jug at once, and hefting it as lightly as if it were a wine cup, drank a long, long draught. Then he wet a corner of his sleeve, and cleaned the grime and blood-clot and cobweb off his face and hands as best he could. He spent some while at this, and the girl watched. When he was done he looked better, but his catbath had revealed the scars on one side of his face: old scars long healed, whitish on his dark skin, four parallel ridges from eye to jawbone, as if from the scraping talons of a huge claw.

   • 2006, Jo-Ann Mapson, The Owl & Moon Café, →ISBN:

     "Doesn't matter. You take a cat-bath and change your panties. We've got a date with ten o'clock Mass."

   • 2012, Mary O'Hara Wyman, Grandma's on the Camino: Reflections on a 48-Day Walking Pilgrimage to Santiago, →ISBN:

     After showering if the line was not too long, or a catbath, I changed into clothes I would wear the next day and set out in sandals, free from backpack and poles to find a bar or restaurant where I could sit at a table alone for some time and write before dinner.

3. (sex) A form of foreplay, chiefly in Southeast Asian sex work, in which one participant licks the other all over their body.
   • 2007, Moammar Emak, Jakarta Undercover II, →ISBN:

     ‘Cat bath, hmm, I wonder what that is?’ I said, trying to imagine what it involved.

     ‘Yeah, right,’ Eko replied. ‘Like you’ve never tried it before. It’s like a cat licking its food, the only difference being that the cat is a beautiful girl. Go on, imagine how it’s done.’

   • 2012, Lenore Lyons, Michele Ford, Men and Masculinities in Southeast Asia, →ISBN:

     The sex worker, called ‘Angel’, scored 7/10 for her all-over ‘catbath’; 8/10 for the ‘bareback barrel blow job’ (BBBJ), and 8/10 for her ‘fuck job’ (FJ), which took place with a condom.

   • 2014, Nancy Hartwell Enonchong, Harem Slave, →ISBN:

     […] but His Hardness wants that damned, hellified, diabolical catbath and foot massage you do.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cat,‎ bath.