The FURminator Really Works

I came across several Web sites that recommended a grooming aid for cats and dogs called the FURminator. I was skeptical at first, but our cats really needed something and nothing we’ve tried before has been of much use. Rakes, brushes, combs, those weird loop blade things—they all disappointed us.

I especially wanted something for my oldest cat, who is a bit stiff in her joints and thus has some trouble grooming herself, particularly in her hindquarters and the top of her back toward the nether end.  (Although Cosequin for Cats is helping her noticeably; she is more nimble and mobile and has even slimmed down a bit.) As for our long-haired cat, I wanted something that would reduce the amount of fur that he was ingesting while grooming himself. The other cats are less in need of grooming, since they spend a lot of time outdoors, which seems to help them shed more easily.

With our oldest cat before, whenever I petted her, I ended up with handfuls of fur. The best I could do to help her with this problem was to use a flea comb to pull out those loose hairs, which worked okay for her, but not so  well on our long-haired cat.

So, with some trepidation, I decided to order the FURminator, and I am so glad I did. The FURminator is to the other grooming aids we’ve tried as a Lamborghini is to a go-cart. It is a bit pricey, but is worth every penny. It has a very sturdy, comfortable handle, and it works incredibly well. Mind you, you have to pay attention to their fine-print instructions, and when they say to groom your beloved pet in an open area where it will be easy to clean up the fur, they mean every word of it.

The first time I used this tool on my oldest cat, she was a bit dubious about it—for about three seconds. Then she started to purr and knead as she felt me remove masses of loose fur from her coat. She was very cooperative. I was amazed at the results. I quickly pulled out an enormous amount of loose fur. I kept grooming her, and kept pulling out more fur than I thought was possible. Where was all that fur coming from? My poor cat!

I groomed her again two days later and got just as much fur the second time. I also groomed our long-haired cat, and although I didn’t get as much fur out of his coat, I did get a lot. For both cats, their coats look much healthier, shinier, and cleaner.

There are different sizes depending on your pet. There’s

• the cat size (which is what I am using)
• the small dog size (which the FURminator people say is recommended for small to medium-sized dogs, cats, rabbits, and ferrets)
• the medium dog size
• the large dog size
• and even one for horses

A reminder: It takes a very light and gentle touch. Be sure to read the instructions, or you might hurt your pet. Also, this tool is NOT recommended for certain breeds of dogs and cats. Be sure to see the FAQs at the FURminator Web site for the lists of recommended and not-recommended breeds as well as a complete set of instructions.

Legal stuff: This information is provided for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, prescribe, heal, repair, or otherwise affect your pet’s health in any way.

Ways to Help Animals

Abbie, a commenter on a previous post, asked how to help animals. We all have so many choices! I am going to list as many as I can think of right now; if you have more to add, please post them as a comment.
 

1. When you adopt animals, as much as possible, adopt them from shelters or rescue societies. That way, you are helping to provide homes for animals that might not otherwise find one.
2. If you have the funds, donate to no-kill animal shelters, or to a local animal rescue society.
3. If you have the time, volunteer to help with a local shelter or animal rescue society. You only have to contribute as much time as you wish. But even if that is only two hours a week, that is two hours more of help a week than they would otherwise get.
4. Be aware of the conditions under which food animals live. For instance, most chickens being raised to produce eggs, even ones that are raised “free range,” are de-beaked. There is a growing movement toward small chicken ranches on which the animals are well taken care of and are not de-beaked. The eggs will be more expensive from such places, but isn’t it worth it? Likewise, if you eat meat, buy organically raised meat only, or do without. (I do eat meat, but tend to eat vegetarian when I dine out, because I don’t know what those animals might have gone through or whether they have hormones and antibiotics in them.)
5. It may not seem directly related, but if you have a yard, go organic. Your own cats and dogs, as well as those of your neigbors, and all kinds of helpful wildlife will thank you. I’ve had my cats come home sick because they had obviously been exposed to some kind of pesticide or herbicidal spray at a neighbor’s house. Pesticides and herbicides are poison, plain and simple, and you do not need them. Pull weeds by hand. Once your garden is alive again, the beneficial insects, who will eat the pests, will move right in. Even fertlizers kill the helpful microorganisms and worms in the soil. If you use compost and mulch, and encourage clover to grow in your lawn, you will find you don’t need it. With one exception, my yard has been completely organic—no sprays, no pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or fertlizers of any kind. Within a year of implementing that policy, the hummingbirds started showing up. Within two years, I had earthworms in my soil again. After I build a large, low, non-mortar stone planting area, the lizards moved in. (The exception? My gardener used a weed-’n'-feed type product in one area of my lawn strictly against my “no chemicals” policy, And we believe that our beloved cat, Rose, died as a result. She started coughing right after he applied it, and our local vet just could not figure out what was ailing her. She died a few months later, and we are still grieving for her.)
6. Reduce your purchases of leather items (shoes, purses, coats, and for example), and never buy items made with genuine fur. There should be no reason for them. You might consider not buying even fake (faux) fur, as even that can give the idea that wearing fur is okay.

A No-Cage, No-Kill Cat Sanctuary and Adoption Center

If you haven’t already found it, please visit the Cat House on the Kings. Especially, be sure to view their video. This is a very worthy endeavour. Consider donating to them!

An Easy Way to Stop Junk Mail and Help the Environment

I just discovered the GreenDimes junk mail removal service. They offer a centralized way to get yourself off junk mailing lists. Reducing the number of catalogs sent out saves trees, fuel and transportation costs, etc., and therefore is a tremendous boost for the environment.

If you opt for GreenDimes’ free service (which includes either (A) getting a dollar from them or (B) having a tree planted or (C) getting a free issue of something), then you will have to do a lot of the legwork yourself, but they offer all the information you need.

They also offer two paid-for services ($20 and $36), which they somewhat misleadingly say only require one payment. What they really mean is that you pay once and they do what they can to get you off the junk mailing lists, which should reduce your junk mail for 3 to 5 years, but you may need to pay a half-price “refresh” fee if you move or your purchasing habits put you on new lists. Since many mailing lists are printed months ahead of time, they say to give the service a good three months to start showing results. You have up to a year to request a refund if you aren’t happy.

You do need to tell them what catalogs you receive that you want to stop receiving, but that is easily done. You will also need to sign and send some postcards, but they send you the postcards and even include postage. It couldn’t get much easier than this.

Oh—and they will plant five trees for you with the paid-for services as well. Since we all need to plant a lot of trees to make up for our carbon footprint in our lifetime, this is another painless way to help the environment.

I am already quite in love with this service. I signed up for their $20 service, and have already added over 20 catalogs to the list. I have been recycling all my junk mail, but it is a greater benefit to the environment to reduce it or stop it entirely.

Carbon Footprint? What is That?

Your carbon footprint is basically the quantity of carbon dioxide you cause to be created by using utilities, driving a car (or using buses, taxis, airplanes, etc.), using gas-powered lawn equipment, riding a motorcycle, and so on.

How much is your carbon footprint? Use this calculator to find out. It will also tell you how many trees you need to plant to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions you create. Since carbon dioxide is absorbed by trees, a very easy and common way to offset your carbon footprint is by planting trees, either on your own or by paying someone to do it (or, of course, both).

I am proud to say my household carbon footprint is much smaller than the national average. Having made the calculations, I find that between my gardens over the years and paying for trees to be planted, I have already planted almost enough trees (36) to make up for my carbon footprint (I need to plant a minimum of 43). Nice to know. However, I believe the national average, carbon-footprint-wise, is much higher, so if you don’t want to use the calculator, you can just go with the national average, which is that most people need to plant about 77 trees.

 

Not All Animal Rescue Societies Truly Rescue

I just took a look at this Web site—it has a nice, clean appearance, and reviews some really cool products for cats. Take a look, if only for the nifty cat swag.

But also, the author has written an article about Best Friends Animal Society and a recent rescue they have been working on. A case of institutionalized animal hoarding had been found, and Best Friends was brought in to help make things better

Animal hoarding is a weird aberration in which a person or institution (in this case, an institution named FLOCK), collect some type of animal, saying that they are only thinking of that animal. But instead of caring properly for them or trying to find good homes for them, the hoarder(s) maintain the animals in horrific conditions. The animals often die or end up completely frightened and confused—and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The conditions are truly, truly horrible, and the state in which the animals are when discovered requires a strong stomach.

To quote from the HARC (the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium at Tufts University), “Animal hoarding is not about animal sheltering, rescue, or sanctuary, and should not be confused with these legitimate efforts to help animals. It IS about satisfying a human need to accumulate animals and control them, and this need supercedes the needs of the animals involved.”

In this case, the conditions were as horrific as they get.

The story brought tears to my eyes. I have such a hard time understanding how people can harm cats, and I really don’t get the cat hoarding mentality. Yet it is a problem. A few months ago, I read of a case of cat hoarding that took place in Petaluma a few years back. The woman who was doing it said she was “rational.” Ha!

Pages: 1 2

A Turkey Visitor Provides Food for Thought

On March 27th, I was up early working at my computer with my balcony door open (which is pretty usual—I like lots of fresh air). I kept hearing what sounded like a turkey gobbling coming from down the street, but told myself it couldn’t be so, could it? It could have been a very weird dog.

The gobbling got closer and closer until it was coming from right in front of my house, at which point I had to get up to go check it out, because now it sounded unmistakably like a turkey. Sure enough, there in my front lawn was a young-looking turkey, strutting around. As soon as I stepped onto the balcony, though, it whisked around the corner into my side yard. I never realized that the land speed of a turkey was so fast.

I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs, then snuck quietly out the back door. It tried to come into my back yard but was foiled by the iron gate. When I came out, it turned around and headed for the northwest corner of my yard. I got a few pictures, one that isn’t very clear at all, one under the redwoods (taken through the iron gate), and a couple that I took by swinging wide and around the redwoods after it flew to the back fence. Then it spread its wings and flew away, rather gracefully and effortlessly for such a large bird.

Pages: 1 2

About Bees…and the Environment

I just discovered that bees are slaves. I never knew that. In the years in which I kept bees, starting with the very gentle swarm that I captured without incident or loss of life back in the late 1970s, and kept for several years without incident, I always thought that it was a cooperative enterprise. Mind you, I didn’t practice any of the things that many beekeepers do–I never killed a queen; never killed any of the bees; never medicated them; collected only the surplus honey, not the honey they needed to overwinter with, nor the pollen, propolis, royal jelly, etc.; and so on. Essentially, I respected the bees as partners, and thought kindly of them, and did everything I knew how (which was mostly just leaving them alone and providng them with new supers as needed) to make sure they were healthy and happy. In my entire time managing that hive, I was never stung. (I later had a different hive of bees in Arizona, and that was a nasty-tempered bunch. With that hive, I did get stung.)

I am being sarcastic here about the bees-as-slaves idea. The person who wrote that bees are slaves has many valid points about how we, as a society, are mismanaging honeybees, and I agree with most of them. Many years ago, Rudolph Steiner predicted that our beekeeping practices would weaken honeybees, to the point that we would have the exact problems we are having today with colony collapse disorder (CCD).

CCD is just one result of the carelessness with which humanity as a whole has been treating the world. Though some like to point fingers at the United States, the truth is that people around the world, in all levels of society, are abusing the environment out of ignorance, greed, shortsightedness, and general contempt for any lives other than their own.

The thing is, it is so easy to reduce one’s impact, to respect the planet, to live kindly and lovingly on this earth. It may mean some “sacrifices” for some people (do we women really need to wear makeup everyday? Or even any day, for that matter?), but the end result will be happier people and a healthier planet, I am quite sure of it. You can start by checking out some of my recommendations on this page.

There is a lot of information available on the Internet on the many different things you can do to help the environment; many of them will save you time and money, too, making it a win-win situation for all.

If you decide to make a difference, don’t overwhelm yourself and give yourself goals that are hard to reach. Start small. Pick even one change that you are willing to make, then stick to that one change for a while. Do the research, though. Some groups, such as PETA, who sound like they are wonderful are sometimes doing the opposite of what they say they are about.