{"id":9416,"date":"2013-04-26T05:50:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T09:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/?p=9416"},"modified":"2013-04-26T20:02:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-27T00:02:33","slug":"national-hairball-awareness-day-what-is-furminator-up-to-now-to-promote-good-health-and-grooming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/national-hairball-awareness-day-what-is-furminator-up-to-now-to-promote-good-health-and-grooming\/","title":{"rendered":"National Hairball Awareness Day – What is FURminator up to Now to Promote Good Health and Grooming?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"National<\/a>Wow \u2013it\u2019s hard to believe a whole year has gone by and it\u2019s National Hairball Awareness Day again.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0barely recovered from last year\u2019s extravaganza and now here we go again, I\u2019m my brushing the fur of my eight cats with a FURminator deShedding tool and collecting it to glue it onto a piece of cardboard shaped like a handlebar\u00a0mustache\u00a0to make light of a very serious problem \u2013 hairballs. That\u2019s right, the folks at FURminator have come up with yet another fun way to spread awareness about what a hairball is and how we can help prevent our cats from getting them by asking us cat bloggers to take a picture of our cat(s) wearing a\u00a0mustache\u00a0made out of their own fur\u2026 This\u00a0isn’t\u00a0weird at all, right? Of course not, all of my friends are cat lovers or bloggers, so to us, this is all perfectly normal and just another day in the life in the cat blogosphere.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s task was to make a celebrity of my choice out of the fur I collected from brushing my cats and naturally I decided to embarrass myself in the name of cat health to make the one and only celebrity\u00a0I’ve\u00a0ever wanted to meet my whole life, Ellen DeGeneres. I thought for sure I would have been invited on her show immediately after my tribute, but alas, my phone has still not rung. Anyhow, that\u2019s neither here nor there \u2013 the first matter at hand is a quick lesson on what a hairball is, why they are potentially dangerous to you cat, and how you can help manage them.<\/p>\n

\"Ellen-and-Deb\"<\/a>

Me last year with a FURminating deShedding tool and the likeness I made of Ellen out of my cat’s fur. And I wonder why she hasn’t contacted me yet…<\/p><\/div>Basically, hairballs develop as a result of a cat\u2019s common grooming routine. When the cat licks its fur, tiny hook-like structures on its tongue catch the loose and dead hair, which is then swallowed. The majority of this hair passes all the way through the digestive tract with no problems. But if some hair stays in the stomach, it can form a hairball. Typically the cat will hack up the hairball with no problems, but if you notice symptoms such as vomiting or gagging without producing a hairball, lack of appetite, lethargy, constipation, or diarrhea, be sure to contact your veterinarian, as this could be an indication that a hairball has caused a potentially life-threatening blockage.<\/p>\n

Some breeds are more susceptible to hairballs than others, like Maine Coons and Persians, and some cats are more fastidious with their grooming than others. But, the good news, with products like the FURminator tool, the amount of fur a cat can ingest is greatly reduced, as the deShedder quickly and thoroughly removes the cat\u2019s undercoat and loose hair which is the major source of shedding.<\/p>\n

I have now had my FURminator for a year and my cats still enjoy it very much, which means I have greatly reduced the amount of fur that they can ingest. They love the feeling of the deShedding tool and I love how soft and silky their fur is after I use it. Because of all that FURminator love, I figured why not get to the task at hand and have some mustache making fun for a good cause. Here goes:<\/p>\n

\"zee-with-furm\"<\/a>

The first step to making a mustache out of your cat’s fur is to find a cat. Preferably one that has hair. If you happen to have a Maine Coon handy like I do, all the better.<\/p><\/div>

\"fur\"<\/a>

I have eight cats so I decided a nice eclectic mix of fur from all of them was in order to make my mustache as stylish as possible…<\/p><\/div>

\"mustache\"<\/a>

And here’s where it starts to get interesting. And messy. You try and glue cat hair to a piece of card board shaped like a mustache and you’ll see what I mean. Go ahead and try it – I’ll wait…<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

OKAY, LET’S SEE WHAT WE GET AS A RESULT OF ALL THAT HAIR… DRUM ROLL PLEASE…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kizmet-furball-Zee-and-Zoey\"<\/a>

My first victim was Kizmet… and don’t worry, no kitties were harmed in this\u00a0exercise\u00a0 I merely took the image of the mustache photo, brought it into Photoshop, cut it out with the pen tool to extract it from the background, saved it as a new path layer, and placed it into a new file with the picture of Kizmet. Easy as making Thanksgiving dinner…<\/p><\/div>

\"furball-cats\"<\/a>

Wanting all my cats to partake in the exercise, I repeated the same fun process with Kizmet’s above picture. The only difference, all I had to do was find a picture of each of my eight cats and painstakingly extract their images from the background of the photo they were in to transfer to a new document to showcase all of them, while at the same time, finding an image of sunglasses to reduce to size to fit on each of their faces along with the jpeg image of the mustache. I could do this in my sleep at this point and nothing is safe from the pen tool with me…<\/p><\/div>And there you have it \u2013 if this vigilante cat posse against furballs\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0convince you to use the FURminator, I don\u2019t know what else will. And please be advised that while we highly recommend the FURminator, they do not totally prevent hairballs in cats. Other things that can be done in conjunction with regular grooming with the FURminator are using specialized cat food formulas that reduce hairballs, encouraging play activity instead of licking when a cat seems to be excessively grooming, and using one of a number of different hairball products on the market today, most of which are mild laxatives that help hairballs pass through the digestive tract.<\/p>\n

As with anything regarding your cat, pay attention to his or her needs to determine what course of action needs to happen. Regular grooming is the first step to preventing hairballs and the FURminator deShedding tool not only removes a significant amount of your cat\u2019s hair safely and effectively, it encourages bonding with your cat which is a great bonus. The FURminator is available in different styles for special hair lengths and I invite you to check out their facebook page<\/a> today for all kinds of great posts and pictures that other bloggers and FURminator fans have shared, as well as information on how you can get your own FURminator deShedding tool!<\/p>\n

Editors Note:<\/strong> I normally only post once a day, but today is also National Kids and Pet Day and I could not resist posting about such an important topic. Please be sure to<\/em><\/span> click here<\/a> and visit – I share some very adorable pictures that will melt your heart!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow \u2013it\u2019s hard to believe a whole year has gone by and it\u2019s National Hairball Awareness Day again.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0barely recovered from last year\u2019s extravaganza and now here we go again, I\u2019m my brushing the fur of my eight cats with a FURminator deShedding tool and collecting it to glue it onto a piece of cardboard shaped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365,3],"tags":[1265,596,321,513,320],"class_list":["post-9416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cat-humor","category-inspiration-healing","tag-cats","tag-furballs","tag-furminator","tag-grooming","tag-national-hairball-awareness-day"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/furball-cats1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9416"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9474,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416\/revisions\/9474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeezoey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}