Help! Cat got into transmission fluid. How to clean her?

Amelia, my cat, went out exploring last night around dinner time. She came slinking in with what we think was transmission fluid all over her! We immediately got her into a bath and put some dawn on her and tried to scrub it off. In the meantime I was calling the emergency vet to see if we could get her in because I didn't know if she had ingested any. After filling out a billion online forms, the emergency vet calls me and tells me just to bathe her and there's nothing they can do. She is still a hot mess. We give her another bath, this time with vegetable oil and dawn because not so helpful emergency vet said that vegetable oil or olive oil would help cling to the transmission fluid. Yeah, right. I ended up with a wet, angry, oily, dish-soapy cat. We went through a ton of towels trying to dry her off but they were getting dirty so we kept going through more towels. She is still leaking fluid from her coat this morning, all over my bed and pj's of course. I fed her though and she ate so I am reasonably sure she didn't ingest any of the transmission fluid besides maybe licking some off of her fur. She looks miserable. I am miserable. My beautiful cat looks like a drowned rat. I don't know what else to do to clean her! We found the pan of transmission fluid that she must have jumped into in my neighbors yard. It was right next to the fence. So she must have jumped over the fence and landed in it. That explains how it got on her belly. Poor Amelia! Any other ideas on how to clean her?

Does this help?

Thanks @unsure123 We washed her using dawn twice and using vegetable oil (on the advice of the vet, which btw only seemed to make things worse) once. She is really hard to bathe because she hates water and the transmission fluid is everywhere!!!! I may have to bathe her again tonight and use more dawn. I was even thinking getting some clean sand and rubbing it into her fur before the bath because it might help soak up some of the fluid?

With all the cats who have shared my life I have never had this problem. Scary stuff...I can't think of what else to do except the Dawn bath. Seems a decent ER vet would help! The oil sounds like an absurd idea.

All I can think of is a fairly thick Dawn bath. The only other thought I have is a bath with Neutrogena Anti-Residue shampoo...??? It really cleans.


Good luck, SK. I hope something works ASAP. xx

Keep using the Dawn. It's the best thing for getting rid of oil in their coats. One of my cats got covered in motor oil years ago. It took several wash, rinse repeat cycles to get it off him.

Thanks everyone. She had another bath last night. That makes three baths. A lot of fluid came out of her fur last night. Her hair is still all sticky up-y. I hope it eventually gets back to the soft silky fur that she had before this mess. I don't know yet if we will give her another bath. I told my Dad to see how she is today in the light of day. After the holiday we might hire someone to give her a bath. She scratched my Dad's arm up pretty good last night because she was terrified. I don't want to hurt her so I am thinking maybe a professional would be best. They should know what they are doing anyway.