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A new poll reveals America's take on pet hair in homes
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Pet hair can show up on everything in your house.
Compared to dogs, cats tend to be odor-free and well groomed. Still, unless you have a hairless breed, feline "evidence" in terms of shed hair likely adorns your sofa, bed and favorite pair of black pants.
We accept this hairy consolation because of the many benefits cats bring us: their calming purr, loyalty and playful antics. Plus the added bonuses of not having to brave nasty weather in the middle of the night to leash them and take them out for a bathroom break as is the case with dogs.
New research sows that having a pet can make for quite a hairy situation A national e-mail and online poll of Americans revealed some surprising and not-so surprising findings when it comes to pets and clean homes:
- The average pet owner spends 1.4 hours cleaning up after pets each week, spending an average of $156 in cleaning products each year.
- About 37 percent admit to using air fresheners or candles as "quick fixes" to hide pet odors.
- About 12 percent confess to flipping over chair or sofa cushions to hide pet fur.
- People with indoor pets revealed finding fur in such unusual places as inside the refrigerator, inside CD cases, on their toothbrushes and in their contact solution.
And here's a shocker: three in five people polled (62 percent) declared they would give up a small luxury, like a store-made latte or cable TV for a month.
What's a little fur when it comes to the companionship our cats - and dogs - provide us? And, we're in the majority as 66 percent of Americans own at least one cat or dog and the average American has owned 10 pets in his or her life.
You can minimize fur from being an unwanted part of your home décor by heeding these tips:
- Brush your pet regularly to keep shedding to a minimum.
- Attend to potty accidents inside the home pronto. Cat urine is far more concentrated than dog urine and can cause more of a stain on carpet if not promptly cleaned.
- Minimize muddy paw prints on your floors by keeping a towel near the door. Always wipe your dog’s paws after walks.
Stocking my house with those hair-picking sticky tape rollers and keeping my vacuum cleaner humming every few days is worth sharing my home with my cats, Callie and Cleo and my dogs, Chipper and Cleo.
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