Attack of the Furballs

The thing I hate most about our house is the white carpet. I always said I would NEVER want white carpet. Well, our dream house came with it. It irritates me on a daily basis. When we first moved in, it was immaculate. The previous owners had just had it installed. I was really nervous about having white carpet, seeing as at the time I had three cats. THEN we got Callaway. We didn't know how much damage he was causing until he was several months old. When he was a puppy, he used to pee on the carpet. When we caught him, we cleaned up the mess. What we didn't catch, slowly accumulated dirt over the months until we got to where we are now. Now there are little dirty patches all over the house.

Another test to the carpets has been Bella (pronouned "Baya"). Her little urinating-all-over-the-place fiasco has left us with a not-so-pretty smelling hall closet. Knock on wood, she hasn't done that in a while. Yet another problem is the cats vomiting. At least once a week, one of them eats way too fast and then spews a pile of orange, un-chewed kibble right back up on the carpet. I can't remember the last time any of them did that on the hard floors. It's ALWAYS the carpet.

Lastly is the HAIR. Three cats and a dog, all with dark hair. It accumulates at the baseboards, which makes for very difficult vacuuming. We don't have any of the attachments to our vacuum, so we have to deal with the round end of the extension tube. I want to buy a Dyson SOOO bad. But I have a really hard time convincing myself that it is actually worth the $400-600 price tag.

The result of all these animal messes is the constant need to vacuum, mop and a general "de-furring" of the house, as we like to call it. Before vacuuming, I usually dust (AKA, wipe hair off all horizontal surfaces) and use a lint brush on all beds, chairs, couches and curtains. And I have to do all this at least once a week or it gets entirely out of control. It should probably be done twice a week, but no way am I going to spend that much of my time cleaning. We waited until Callaway was properly housebroken before renting a wet vacuum. It seemed to have helped, but as soon as the carpet completely dried out, the spots showed up again. I've tried spot cleaning with the little hand held wet vacs (thanks, Alexa!), but then I had all these clean areas spotting the rug. I suppose I could do that first, then immediately wet vac the entire carpet? UGH.

A logical preventative is brushing the animals. I leave Callaway up to Travis, so that doesn't get done very often. Plus, we've had trouble finding a brush that will remove his fur. I'm hoping to invest in the Furminator soon. Honestly, that's what I would be doing - investing. That thing costs around $50, depending on the size. For a COMB. I brush the cats about every other week. Sagira, doesn't let me brush her, but she doesn't shed very much. Phage will let me for about a minute before he attacks the brush. Bella will let me brush her for a while, but I swear I could do that for hours and the hair would just keep coming. I'm tempted to have her shaved. Or maybe we'll slip her some Benadryl and give it a try ourselves. Hmmm...