Vacuums: Your best friend and worst enemy

     As a reminder, if you have cats you are going to have fur. There is no easy way to avoid it except for maybe a hairless cat. They shed all the time, brushing might help but my experience has been that it doesn't make a huge difference overall. Maybe if you have a cat that is shedding a lot at a particular time for whatever reason a good brushing will make a little difference but I just can't attest to that. 

    So, you are going to need to vacuum. At this point in time I have 5 cats and 4 vacuums and I can think of at least 2 more that I would like to add to my arsenal. Let me start with the ones I have. 

Robbie the Haier Robot

One of my big regrets as a cat mom is not getting a robot vac sooner. There are some pricey ones, but if you hit amazon on a good day you can find some less popular ones on sale. This one by Haier is no longer in production, but he does a great job.  This one can be programmed to run once a day and he will run until his battery is out and then he will go back to his base to recharge. Sometimes he gets stuck on things that are too high for him to climb but not high enough for him to bump off of and go around.  I can live with this because he picks up cat hair, cat litter, random little things. He has been our first line of defense in the new house against "cat tumbleweeds" and we just love it,

That being said, if you have a cat that pukes  of goes out of the litter box in a spot this thing will run over you might want to skip it or if you can block off the place your cat normally pukes/poops that would be best. There are stories online of people using these and having it run over dog poop. You can look that up on your own. 

These Guys

On the left we have our Eureka canister vac.  I like the rotating brush. I never bother with using the attachments except for if I need the crevice tool or if I need to get a cobweb or something.  I literally put couch cushions on the floor and just run them over with the regular part of the vacuum. I won't lie, I prefer a bagged vacuum but this was a compromise with my husband. My advice to those like me who dislike the dust of the canister would be empty it before during and after. It works better the cleaner you keep the canister. 

On the right is My hoover rug shampooer. You can get one of these on sale for like $130 bucks. It doesn't heat the water like some more expensive steam cleaners but you can put hot water in the tank and that works pretty good.  If you have a pee-er or a puker plus and upholstery, rugs or carpets this is an essential.  I use the attachments on this A LOT because my cats like to puke on chairs and stairs.  If you have hardwood with a rug on it, after using this you'll want to fold back the rug and let it dry off the wood to avoid stains on the wood. 

I also have a Bissel Zing which is not pictured.  It's a little bagged canister vac and it does its job in the basement picking up litter outside the boxes. I would prefer to get another robot vac for the basement where the boxes are but Lisa is a floor shitter so until we find a way to get her in the box 100 percent of the time the zing will have to do. 

The vacuums I wish I had would be a bagged upright, for those days when it just seems like there is too much fur and dust in the air, and some kind of dust buster or stick vac.  As I mentioned I don't like using the attachments on my regular upright and I think a smaller vacuum would make some things easier. 

I don't particularly endorse any brand of vacuum or shampooer.  The point of this post is really to show the level of commitment involved in managing the hair of five cats.  I actually have an entire second post coming devoted to the OTHER tools I use to manage cat hair. I want to express that with cats or any pet that is covered with hair and running around your house, that you can't avoid it. You have to accept it and find ways of working with it.  The sooner you accept the hair and your new life as a person who vacuums as a religion, the sooner you can cope with another topic that will have it's post very soon, claws. So happy Vacuuming! 

A formal introduction to my cats

Without these guys, there would be no basis for this blog, my house would be cleaner, my couch would be smoother, and yet, I still love them. So, without further ado, let's meet the players.



Kiley

Kiley was my first cat,  I worked at a bank and my friend saw her running around the parking lot on his smoke break. I took her home and when my then boyfriend split, Kiley became my second in command.  She doesn't really like other cats but she kind of tolerates some of them. She is grey and white, and her hair is kind textured, almost fluffy.  She also likes to make biscuits on fluffy blankets, like the one in this picture. She scratches the couch, but not posts. She chews off claw caps pretty much as soon as they are on and she is a messy eater. She loves laps though, and I love this cat. 

Jenny

Jenny is the youngest of the five cats, but she was my second cat. My mother in laws TNR'd Jenny's mom and suspected that there might be a litter somewhere, so she searched the 'hood and found nothing, took the cat in to be spayed. The next day while Gypsy (the mama cat) was recuperating, she was having a yard sale and heard some small meows.  Gypsy had hid 4 of the smallest kittens she'd ever seen under the windowsill of an abandoned house. Jenny was the runt, she wasn't going to make it, but somehow she did and I picked her because at the time she was the ugliest of the kittens. She grew up to be quite cute, but at 7 pounds is a tiny little cat. She was born in 2011 and people still see her now and say "ohhh a kitten!" but nope, she is full grown.  Her fur is similar to Kiley's and she isn't the cleanest  cat going. She likes to scratch the molding, but she will leave her caps on until they fall off.  She tries to fight the biggest cat regularly


Lisa,  aka  Lisac, aka sackmonster, aka sackaloon, aka loooooooo

Lisa here was a rescue my husbands mom did, she was supposed to be fostered until her owner was found, as it was believed they went to the hospital and would be coming back for her. It never happened, we don't know what happened, but they did try to find the person. She is the BIGGEST GIRL EVER. Other cat people, rescuers and TNR people have called her the biggest girl they've ever seen.  She played nurse to Jenny and her siblings, being new to that house just a few months before they were born. Now Jenny chases her despite their size difference.  Lisa doesn't scratch too much, she likes corrugated cardboard scratchers and she likes to be groomed and will groom herself on anything. We tried claw caps on her but one of her paws the claws grow into the pads naturally and with the caps, it was too much.  Lisa's vice is that she is an outside the box shitter.  She pees in the box no problem, but if any other cat including herself, has peed in the box, she shits on the floor outside the box. This is an example of accepting your cat lifestyle. We could go crazy trying to make her shit in a box, but she has picked a spot to shit and we accept it. If it were somewhere more out in the open we might not, but so long as it's in the corner next to the box and she isn't peeing outside we are good. I'll get more into the boxes at another time. Lisa's fur is brown and similar to Kiley and Jenny, maybe just a little smoother. Lisa is about 10 years old and has been with my husband since 2011.

The Black and Grey Monsters AKA Mr. Blackman and Greyston AKA Miss Grace Greyson

Black Monster and Grey Monster were rescued by my mother in law in 2012 with the full intent that they were to live outdoors. She went to a housing project where a friend said they were just let out when a person moved and were living in the alley, and being abused by some local bad children. They were super emaciated and you could see from their bone structures that they are either mother and son or brother and sister. My MIL tried to call them romeo and Juliette, but it never stuck. They didn't want to stay outside, and Lisa was feeling lonely from the death of Rambo and the adoption of the kittens, So these guys were allowed to stay. Funny thing is Lisa hates them. Mr. Blackman is a scratcher, and he attacks all his sisters but he is good with his caps. His hair is black and silky. Miss Grey is the mellowest cat who has ever lived. She hates claw caps and scratches pretty much anything she can get to. She has stomatitis and had a bunch of teeth removed and needs to go back for more.  Her fur is a little silkier than Kiley and Jenny but not as slick as Mr Blackman.  If they are siblings they were born probably in late 2010.


So that's them and as you can see, we have our hands full with mostly Grey cats.

"Cat proofing" and the glorious myths and realities of keeping your house clean with cats.

I was just vacuuming, thinking about some things in my house that need to be fixed because I didn't properly "cat proof" them.  I realized that it was a constant learning process. Some things my cats have done have pissed me off, but it's their natural behavior so I try to keep my cool about it. So I thought maybe I should share the things I've learned with others. 

I have 5 cats and later I will do an intro post to them, their cute and shitty behaviors, the types and colors of their fur etc.  The one thing I can say, no matter how many cats you have or what types of fur they have, unless your cat is hairless, fur is life.  When I talk cat proof, I'm talking nails. It kills me how many pet proofing remedies focus strictly on the fur, when that stuff comes off pretty easily with diligence and the proper tools. 

Claws are different story. declawing is a bad move, not really nice or good for the cat etc. So mine all have their claws, some are sharper than others. They like to scratch different things. I'll put that in the intros. 

I'm also going to have to do a post about the tools I have found essential (so far...) 

In the interest of full disclosure my husband does like 90 percent of our house cleaning, but his strategy is to clean and call the cats assholes. I try to take the things he calls them assholes for and find was to make them less assy. 

Let us hope I manage to put together a few more posts.