When Cat Hair Ruled the World

I confess. I absolutely loathe doing housework. Don't get me wrong, I love a clean house, I just hate doing what needs doing in order to have it. Unfortunately, not being independently wealthy, the housecleaning falls to the housekeeper (me) rather than the staff of maids. The only staff I have is a staff of five -- me and the four felines who share my domicile -- one of us to clean and four to contribute something to clean. It works for them, anyway.

I can live without frequent vacuuming. The boys (and Phoebe) don't really like the sound of my small but efficient Oreck although Gandhi, for some perverse reason, actually likes having the brush attachment run over his luxurious fur -- provided the motor is as far away as possible. Dusting I can live without too but after a while it gets to me and I have to do it. The vacuuming, though, is what gets to me faster, mainly because, with bare floors, things show up on it that wouldn't normally show on carpets, things like, well, loose aggregations of cat hair.

I have a whole bunch of slippers I like to wear because they have microfiber fingers on the bottom so I can actually dust-mop the floor just by walking (or rather shuffling, which I do more naturally these days). That works for me -- up to a point. They are useful for picking up stray small patches of cat fluff, particularly those under my desk (which seems to be some kind of sanctuary or meeting hall for them), but there comes a point where they do their own form of the Occupy movement. They set up a camp and, if I remove as many as I see, within just a few minutes there are more there. So, in the interest of my runny nose and the taunting of the fluff balls, it's time to dig out the Oreck and mow the floors. Mowing seems like the proper term; it's a bit like taking care of the grass which has to be trimmed down periodically. So it is with my floors because I have no illusions of ever getting every blade -- or every hair -- in perfect trim and order. Never happen. Nope. I will probably be dead for ten years and whoever lives here (if anyone does) will probably still be finding a stray clump or two somewhere.

I wonder -- what did Pharaoh do when some of the representatives of the god Bast besmirched his brilliant-white kilt with dark cat hair?  Has Zahi Hawass found any cat hair anywhere among the mummies and mummy cases under his oversight? My cats certainly haven't forgotten that their distant ancestors were once treated as gods -- they remind me of that every mealtime and about 4 a.m. when they use me as an obstacle in the nightly steeplechase or find their dry food dish empty at 2:30 a.m.  Just as a side note, I wonder how many of Caesar's army, cats tied onto their shields so that the Egyptians wouldn't strike and possibly kill one of their now-captive gods, sneezed their way into Egypt and added it to the empire. Does metal armor collect static and cat hair?  Or did the cat hair just float around and get caught in those tall red crests on top of their helmets?

Oh, well. It's time I gave up, bit the bullet and mow my floors. But so help me, if I go over a space six times, go to do another section of floor and turn around, I am betting there will be another occupier sitting where I just mowed, daring me to try again to remove it from its position. Unfortunately, in this little indoor kingdom, cat hair did and still rules.

Gripe as I will, though, I'd rather have a small kingdom with cat hair than a mansion without it. The boys provide company and give me a bit of fluff to write about now and then.

They don't mind. They know they're still household gods.