Andrzej's Blog: Priscilla, Queen of the House

I love my cat. She’s called Priscilla and she’s a very hairy cat indeed. If I wasn’t careful, the whole house would be covered in her hair. I’d be covered in her hair. My guests would be covered in her hair.

Fortunately, I know what steps to take to manage the mess and keep the house in a good clean state, despite her best efforts, so I thought I’d share some tips with you.

Firstly, and it may seem obvious, I try to keep her in good condition, and brush her every week in the back garden. She doesn’t especially enjoy it, but if the loose hairs aren’t on her, they can’t fall off in the house.

I keep her litter tray in the utility room near the back door. It’s one of the covered ones that helps to contain the smell, but I think it’s still important to attend to the litter every day and make sure everything is covered over. The litter is completely changed every week, and I use tray liners to make sure the smells don’t stick.

Priscilla’s water and food bowls are also in the utility room. To prevent the smell of decaying cat food lingering, I try to wash up the food bowl as soon as she’s eaten it all.

She does have a bed – I found a wicker one to be best as it’s easy to take outside and wipe clean properly. The bedding I shake off, and wash every now and then, but I’ve found that a little baking powder can be sprinkled on to keep smells down between cleans.

Of course, being a cat, she does have lots of other favourite places to lay, including on one of the chairs in the living room. To save constantly cleaning it, I just put a blanket on there which can be shaken and washed as needed.

For cleaning sofas and curtains and things like that, I use the special upholstery attachment on the vacuum cleaner. When that doesn’t get everything up, I also use one of those sticky rollers, also good on clothes. If you don’t have one of those in, you can wrap wide sticky tape around your hand, tacky side out, and brush across fabrics with it, it soon gets all the hair up! I did also hear that a wetted rubber glove does a great job, but I’ve not tried that yet.

Downstairs I don’t have any carpets, just wooden and tiled flooring. Hoovering in these areas can lead to hairs and dust being blown around a bit, so I find that also using an electrostatic mop afterwards really does the trick. Upstairs is carpeted, and I have a decent strength vacuum cleaner with a HEPA grade filter to help contain any nasties. Even with a good cleaner you need to go over the carpet more than once to get everything up, I find, but eventually you get there with it.

So yes, despite lovely Priscilla’s best efforts, I manage to keep the house in good order. Let us know how you manage with your pets!

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