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.
   • 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.2004, Dana Kramer-Rolls, The Way of the Cat, →ISBN
2. (figuratively) A quick wash by wiping or dabbing the skin, especially of one's face.
   • 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....1971, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan, →ISBN
3. A form of foreplay, chiefly in Southeast Asian sex work, in which one participant licks the other all over their body.
   • ‘Cat bath, hmm, I wonder what that is?’ I said, trying to imagine what it involved.2007, Moammar Emak, Jakarta Undercover II, →ISBN
4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cat, bath.