Frugal tip....

Use the hair that your cat sheds to make a whole new cat!

This new cat won't eat or poop, so it will be the most frugal pet EVER!




In case you're wondering, this is the result of our new Furminator -- a tool that gets at pets' undercoat (which is what falls out) to prevent shedding/hairballs. And, yes, this was all in one sitting. It took about an hour, and kept getting funnier as the pile grew.


This isn't our first Furminator, unforunately. Sandy, with her evil machinations, managed to hide the first one from me. (In other words, we lost it. And, despite having searched the apartment three or four times, we still haven't found the damn thing.)


The stubborn and frugal part of me refused to buy a new one, because of the universal law: As soon as you give up and buy a replacement, the original one gets found. But after 9 months and the beginning of shedding season, we decided it was money well spent.


I do like this tool because it's pretty efficient (when you've used a grooming tool in the last 9 months, anyway) and it doesn't hurt the animal.


Even so, Sandy let me know in her own way that she was done with grooming for awhile. That is to say, she hissed, clawed at my hand and thereby drew blood from my index finger. Lil' turd!


I bet my new cat won't do that. Well, I know my new cat won't. She won't have any claws, or paws to speak of! Just lots and lots of fur! And the new cat won't meow constantly every time I leave the room, or go down the hall for a moment. Though it is nice to have a fan club...


On a side note, I was joking with an old friend over email about cat shedding. I said something about knitting a new cat out of all the hair. Apparently, she'd actually bothered to try and spin the stuff into yarn for her knitting purposes. (Yeah, didn't think you could get creepier than making a new cat, didja?)


First off, if she had remembered her fairy tales right, she would have tried to spin it into gold. Silly girl. Secondly, apparently the hair really didn't want to be a cohesive yarn. So what little she succeeded in making broke easily.


So let this be a lesson to you: Do NOT use your cat's shed hair to make yarn. Do the smart thing and just make a back-up cat!


Oh, and to give you a better senes of proportion about just how much came off this lil kitty of mine (who's about 5-6 pounds, max), I took a picture after balling it up:







Meanwhile, we're keeping this Furminator in plain view, so it doesn't "disappear" like the first one. We're actually considering using one of our many extraneous cords to tie it to the sofa leg. (A friend of mine did this with a bed post and his remote control. It seemed hilarious at first, but over time, as he never had to hunt for the remote, it seemed brilliant!)


And since it's every girl's prerogative to make people look at pictures of her cat and mumble "Oh... cute! Did you make that bonnet yourself?" I present a shot of the hair-source (aka Sandy) in one of her more adorable sleeping positions:



Did you make the girly noise? I know I did. I'm such a sucker...


Hope you and your soon-to-be two cats enjoyed this post!