Hairball Season: Grooming Blue & Extra Clean Ups

By Amanda Lin
Updated on
Hi, I’m Amanda! Read my introduction to learn more about me and Blue, my fluffy fire point Himalayan-Persian cat.
Another day, another hairball. Maybe the air inside our home is drier now that it’s -20 degrees Celsius outside. Could be the furnace constantly blowing warm air to combat the whistles of winter that sneak in the door sweeps. Do cats get excessively hot when cuddled in a nook in the thick of winter? Assuming all of the above to be true gives me a good idea of why we seem to have a landmine of hairballs strewn about.
The air conditioning in the summer keeps the temperature cool, constant, and comfortable. Blue thrives in the summer months. An indoor cat with outdoor cat tendencies. In my brain, going off the cuff here, potentially regulating her temperature in the winter is more difficult for Blue and causes her to shed more than in the summer months. Naturally, this leads to more grooming and a plethora of hairballs.
Rise & Shine
It seems I don’t go one morning without being informed about a new pile of vomit to clean up, each containing a giant fur log. Apologies for being graphic. However, if you have a cat, you know exactly what I am talking about. Although this Groundhog Day situation can be frustrating for me, forever cleaning, I do feel bad for Blue because I assume this is not very fun for her, either.
Just kidding, she’s pretty unphased about this entire state of affairs, and almost always immediately heads back into grooming mode. At some point, cats must just simply accept this as their fate and view it as another task on the daily to-do list. This has to be the foundation of the cat-human hierarchy. Is there anything more humbling as a cat owner than having to clean up after these messes at any given moment? Who is really the master in this household?
I like to believe Blue and I share these rankings in our house. We manage to balance each other out with wants, needs, and demands. A real pulley system that keeps us flowing as a team. She handles the arrangements for affection and fun, and I get to organize my time around her maintenance, cleaning requirements, and meals. Pure synergy. Truthfully, if I wasn’t ready for the responsibility, our lives would be on two very different paths, and I’m more than happy to have her with me and be her subservient housemaid than the latter.
2025 Innovation?
Wouldn’t it be a cool concept to have a single location that your cat knew to frequent every time they had to dispel a hairball? Imagine knowing exactly where to clean without fail instead of praying you don’t find it by stepping in it while half asleep, while it’s still dark out. Maybe we can hope for a training manual to be released in 2025, but until then, we will continue to play it by ear since we can hear them coming from a mile away or by an absolute surprise when in a hurry to get out the door.
- Read her previous article: Who Pooped in the Crawl Space? Blue’s Act of Defiance
- Read her next article: When Cats Follow You Everywhere: Blue the Real-Life Shadow