Advice—April 2008

Dear Sparkle,
Usually things are nice and quiet around my house, but every few days this horrible woman comes over and creates havoc. She moves things around and makes everything smell awful. That’s bad enough, but then she pulls out this monstrous contraption that roars and sucks up everything in its path. It’s all I can do to run outside until it goes away. Can you please tell me how to get this woman and her monster machine out of my life?
Signed,
Scared for My Life

Dear Scared,
I hate those noisy monster things too (we also have one here and it’s called Oreck — with a name like that, I think it’s a space alien), but you might be overreacting just a little. True, you don’t want to be near something that sucks up everything in its path, especially if you have a fluffy tail like mine, and the noise is deafening, but you don’t have to let the thing chase you out of the house. If you took the opportunity to examine that monster from a safe distance (under the couch or a bed is always good), you would see that it moves far more slowly than a cat and it’s rather clumsy. It can’t jump at all. Plus it won’t even move unless there’s a human pushing it around, so these things are also lazy. I don’t believe they are really all that dangerous, as long as you stay out of their path. That doesn’t mean you have to leave the house completely, though. Here’s a rule to go by: if you are far enough away so that the noise doesn’t hurt your ears, you are most likely safe.

I would be more concerned about that weird smelling stuff that woman puts all over everything. Humans have this really odd habit of putting smelly potions on surfaces. They call it “cleaning.” Shows how stupid they are. A little dirt never hurt anything, but those potions are often toxic. I trust that your human has made sure to keep all the really poisonous cleaning stuff away from you, and that she has told this cleaning human who visits to do the same. Many commercial cleaning solutions can make us sick, especially anything containing phenol, which is often found in the pine-scented stuff. Even drier sheets aren’t good for us to be around, and mothballs can kill us cats. So stay away from that bad-smelling stuff, always. Some thoughtful humans only use old-fashioned, natural cleaning solutions like non-chlorine bleach, vinegar and baking soda. My human is even more thoughtful — she avoids cleaning whenever possible and hasn’t gotten around to finding one of those cleaning humans. I’m sorry to say I can’t really give you advice on how to get rid of yours, since most of my suggestions only wind up making situations that create a need for these people.