Cats have rough tongues.

Last weekend, I went to celebrate my niece’s first birthday in Decatur. My older brother lives there with his family.

In addition to a cat, they have a dog as well.

While sitting on the couch in my brother’s den, his cat, “Fetch,” started to lick my left hand.

At first, it was an interesting feeling, but when Fetch started digging into his task, it felt quite rough, like sand paper being scraped against my skin.

A few hours later ad after it had rained quite a bit, my sister in law opened her back door to let Fetch in the house.

The cat was soaked and not too pleased.

My brother said to let him be, and Fetch proceeded to clean himself up with his rough tongue.

When I say Fetch was soaked, he was soaked. It looked like he dived straight into a deep bathtub full of water, waded a bit and decided to take his exit.

Anyway — I know it’s getting a little long with the wet cat bit — I turn to watch a little TV and after some time, I look to see where Fetch was.

By that point, he had already licked every morsel of water off of his fur, and I was quite amazed.

Looking at my hand, I realized that it had to have been the rough texture of his tongue.

Have you ever noticed how a cat drinks?

Standing just over their bowls, cats lower their heads, dip their tongues into the liquid and bring it back up full of the refreshing goodness they crave.

Fetch managed to clean himself up quite efficiently, and I was pretty impressed.

I thought about how our former cat, as all cats do, would give itself a bath during the summer time. My mom would always make that note in letters to me while I was at camp.

So, if you think about it, a rough surface yielded a clean outcome for a cat, and a new perspective for this human.

We sometimes go through some rough spots, but we always ended up clean on the other side.