We cats are already quite well aware of hairballs and how nasty they are, but apparently there are people who haven’t gotten the message yet. Think about it: Do you honestly believe that we run to a soft (and expensive) place when we’re about to yak up a hairball just to annoy you? No! We seek what comfort we can, whether it’s on your fine wool carpet or your favorite pillow, because the experience of ejecting a hairball is just so unpleasant.
In any case, we’ve decided to participate in FURminator‘s National Hairball Awareness Day campaign in hopes of helping you humans understand that there are things you can do to help keep us from experiencing the discomfort of hairballs — which, of course, will help you from experiencing the discomfort of discovering that your feline friend puked on your bedspread while you slept.
And what sort of humiliation did Mama put us through this year? First, she Furminated Thomas and then she made a mustache out of all the loose hair she collected. Then she took pictures of us “wearing” Thomas’s yucky fur! Worse yet, because she didn’t have any glue, she used clear nail polish to hold the stupid hair on the stupid mustache thing. Talk about reek!
But we bravely soldiered on because we believe in the hairball awareness cause — and because FURminator generously donated 25 FURminator deshedding tools to our friends at HART of Maine, the place where Bella lived before she adopted Mama.
Mama wrote the story of her first cat hairball experience for Catster. In fact, Catster is having a whole hairball week to celebrate (ahem) the joy of the trichobezoar.
Did you know that some vets don’t think hairballs are just a normal part of cats’ lives? They say that if a cat’s intestines are working right and they’re eating good food, cats shouldn’t get hairballs stuck in their tummies. Of course, we here at Paws and Effect HQ eat really good food and we very rarely get hairballs, so maybe those vets are onto something.
If you want to see the other kitties who participated in the Hairball Awareness Day cat mustache contest (and you totally should, because we want it to be clear that we were not the only cats humiliated in such a way), go visit FURminator’s Facebook page. And be sure to visit the other blogs, too, so the kitties don’t feel so bad about being mustached.
JaneA Kelley is a punk rock cat mom and award-winning blogger. She is a regular columnist for Catster Magazine, and she and the Paws and Effect Gang share a home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.