Author: Joe

Dual Cat Bath

I was petting Dash earlier in the week (a somewhat rare occurrence by his choice), and I discovered that he had a few large knots in his undercoat. They’re not obvious looking at him, but they’re big lumps when petting that part of his side. I tried a few times to work at them and brush them out, but even though Dash would start purring when I started he’d always get up within a few seconds and leave.

I didn’t really know what to do about it since he wouldn’t let me mess with it for long enough, but I’ve been meaning to give the cats a bath (so they don’t smell faintly of litter dust and hopefully to help my allergies by removing dander) and I thought that maybe that or the shampoo would help with the knot.

I had to start with Talore because I’m pretty sure that if I started giving Dash a bath Talore would be nowhere to be found when I finished with him. She wasn’t particularly thrilled about being put in the tub, and was somewhat less happy when the water started and I wouldn’t let her get away. I mostly got her shampooed (didn’t mess with her head), and when I had her rinsed and opened the sliding door to the tub she jumped out and tried to wait at the door to be freed. I tried to towel her off, but I don’t think it did much good. At least she wasn’t dripping when I let her out.

When I let Talore out I opened both doors to the bathroom. Talore fled out one, but Dash wandered in through the other to find out what had been happening. I’d planned to let the cats dry Talore off, but since he was there I shut the doors and threw Dash in the tub. Dash handled getting a shower about as well as Talore, except he’s got a long outer coat and after the first attempt at spraying him down I discovered that he was barely damp when I tried to shampoo him. I did manage to get him soaked because his claws had no traction on the tub, and by the time I’d finished spraying him down with warm water he had stopped trying to escape. I don’t know if he decided it wasn’t so bad or if he just figured it couldn’t get any worse. Dash was more willing to be toweled off, but I don’t think it did much for his undercoat.

Here are both cats drying Talore off. Dash didn’t seem too bothered by being damp but Talore worked at cleaning herself till she was pretty well dried off.

It turned out that the bath and shampoo did absolutely nothing for the knots in Dash’s fur, but he let me work out the smaller knot while I had him in the tub.

Since it’s been nice outside I sometimes open the windows. Both cats love sitting there where they can smell and hear the outdoors (and I’ve got a line of noseprints on one of my windows that indicate they spend time there with the window closed too). Ever since Dash tried to lunge at a bird that flew by I’ve made sure both cats have their collars on when the windows are open (there are window screens, but a determined cat would barely be slowed down).

Sunday was actually warm enough that I left the loft window open after dark (usually I shut it when the temperature inside starts dropping, but that didn’t happen till late), and this what happened when I relented and opened the blinds a bit:

I discovered shortly after that picture was taken that Talore had removed her collar. I never did figure out where she left it, but Monday afternoon I caught Dash carrying it around like a toy (probably just because it jingled a bit).

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games movie is coming out this coming week and the group at work is planning to see it, so I figured I’d read the books this weekend.

I was planning to at least finish the first book, but they were so much faster than the books I tend to prefer I ended up finishing all three (I didn’t time book 1, but book 2 I finished within 4 hours of getting the email receipt for buying it on my nook last night, and 3 I started over breakfast today and finished within 4 hours of getting home from church). That’s a decent chunk of the weekend, but I guess I’m comparing it to each book actually taking most of the weekend with few distractions last summer when I was finishing at least a book of Wheel of Time a week.

I enjoyed the entire series, but I generally liked the plot of the first one the most. Between that and that fact that wikipedia tells me the author helped write and produce the movie I actually want to see it now, as opposed to being vaguely interested because several people had told me it was a good book.

On the other hand, now I’m about to go find a Discworld book that I haven’t read to cheer me up. I’ll admit that the ending of the series was a decent resolution to the story, but given some of the events leading up to it I wouldn’t call it a particularly happy ending. I suppose I’m not exactly the target audience considering it’s a young adult novel.

Since I’ve got everything open right now I guess I’ll toss in a few of the sites that I’ve been looking at for ideas of fantasy books to read (in case anyone is interested and so I don’t lose them):
Patrick Rothfuss blog
a goodreads fantasy list

Cleaning Tools

I knew Dash didn’t at all appreciate my vacuum cleaner, but I didn’t expect him to kill it.

To be fair, it’s just the brush assembly that gave out, and it’s because Dash is a medium-haired cat and sheds, not because he actually did anything to it.

Apparently cat hair was getting into one end of the brush assembly and collecting between the bearing and the cap on the end. I’d noticed a faint burning smell, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from so I ignored it. Then the weekend before last I had the vacuum on and I was cleaning up around the litter boxes with the hose when suddenly it started rattling and shaking horribly. I took it apart and discovered the brush wasn’t fixed on its axle, but I didn’t disassemble the brush assembly until the replacement arrived today.

Here’s the mass of cat hair that was between the bearing and the cap on the end of the axle:

Here’s the bearing (if you look closely you can see part of the gap between the edge of the bearing and the wall of plastic that’s supposed to hold it in place):

The friction of turning against the cat hair caused it to heat up and eventually melted the plastic around the bearing so the bearing became loose and was no longer holding the brush steady. At that point the brush was wobbling far enough to rub on its surroundings, which is why I found flakes of burnt plastic on the carpet when the bearing finally went.

I ordered a new brush assembly from Bissel last weekend to repair it. While I was ordering I went ahead and ordered a spotbot too since I’d been considering it for a while (I have white carpet) and it was on sale and even got me free shipping for my entire order.

The spotbot came in on Wednesday (it was shipped from a different place than the brush assembly), so I immediately tried it on a spot that Talore threw up a hairball on a couple weeks ago and I hadn’t managed to clean it as well as I wanted:

Apparently it’s important that the carpet actually be clean around the spot that you’re cleaning. I knew that section of carpet was darker, but I thought it was a stain and it’s been like that since I got the house. Now I’m thinking the carpet just wasn’t cleaned thoroughly before they sold the house to me, so I’ve got a clean spot that’s obvious in the middle of a big dirty patch.

It also looks to me like the spotbot doesn’t do a great job of cleaning around the edges of the spot it’s placed on, so with the dirty carpet it collects a bit of dirt around the edges where it was already dirty and cleans the middle. I’m inclined to accept it, since the spotbot wasn’t made for cleaning large sections of carpet. Despite that, I started just using the spotbot to clean the large section of carpet, but I’m not sure it’s worth the time and trouble.