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| Lola’s shedding is helping birds build their nests. I know. She’s so thoughtful 🙂 |
Lola, my beautiful longhaired child-with-fur-and-attitude, has an undercoat that explodes every Spring.
Yes, explodes I said.
Don’t get me wrong, she sheds all year long but this time of year is especially riddled with fur.
Resourceful type that I am (read: potential hoarding issues), I googled around to see what can be done with it. Lo, apparently, birds love using animal fur for building nests! Since Lola loves stalking watching birds it seems only fair that her fur should help them build some nests.
So we gathered up some hair, some chopped up jute twine, and hung it an onion bag with lots of slits and holes. We refill it regularly as the birds come and pull it away bit by bit, sort of like cotton candy. But hairy.
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| If you’re not an ‘animal person’ this will probably gross you out. The rest of y’all can,keep reading! |
Tangent for pet people*
If you have a fur baby at home and do not know what that purple thing is up on the left, listen up, because I’m about to rock your world.That purple thing is called The Furminator. Stupid name for a great product. It’s like a horse brush with ‘roid rage. It will rid any hairy animal of excess fur in a matter of minutes. You see that pile of fluff on the right? That is from 2 minutes of brushing Lola one morning (and she gets brushed a LOT). If I was to take this thing to your golden retriever for 10 minutes I’d come up with enough hair to fill a Volkswagen. And the best thing is that the fur babies love it! It comes in various sizes for different types of hair and animals. As someone who has lived with animals of all sizes and shedding issues, I cannot recommend it enough. Go get one!
* For the record, I have not been asked or paid to promote this product. I just adore the crap out of it and have even been known to give it as a gift. I love it and I hope you will too 🙂
I have an Australian Shepherd and I can promise you the only way I could still have her in the house in the spring, summer, and fall (in Texas, so basically our extended summer) is because she’s Furminated regularly. I love that thing.
FINALLY! Finally I know what to do with the 2/3rds of every cat I have in the house after every brushing. We have the Furminatur, too, and I love it to bits. The cats don’t love it anywhere near as much, but if I sort of make little balls out ofthe fur I have just brushed out of them, they are distracted enough for me to keep going.
So, from now on those balls will be considerably smaller and I shall keep loads of fluff behind for the birdies. Kinda weird that they would nest in what used to be bits and bats of their mortal enemies, but whatever floats their boat…
Love your idea, thank you so much!
Oh this is great!!! The birds are grabbing up pieces of my coconut hanging basket from last season and hunks of dryer lint; but now a new offering. My kitty sheds the equivalent of 6 kittens per week. I’ll have to give this a try.
I have a similar, but more colorful version hanging in the tree outside my kitchen window. I do a lot of stuff with felted sweaters, and I save the wooly dryer lint I get when I felt a batch of sweaters, for the birds. I didn’t think to cut slits in it, however I can see spots where some wool has been pulled out. I love knowing I’m helping shelter those cute little babies! We have a virtual forest of trees in the back yard, and have seen robins, mourning doves, quail, starlings, magpies, and various finches.
I am (figuratively) skipping merrily away to collect the cat-hair tumbleweeds that blow across my dining room floor for my industrious little backyard birdies.
That is such a cool idea!
And i make little balls of cat fur to keep the kittehs distracted too! Nice to know I’m not alone. lol
Brilliant, thanks for this cool idea! I happen to have access to LOTS of critter fur…Must check out the furminator, too!
The furminator is AMAZING!!! We have a long haired cat that we use it on! Even works well on my shorter haired cat and our dog that has short hair (but a thick undercoat).
LOVE your idea about putting it in the bag!! we just toss ours in the back yard for the birds to find but I bet they love picking it out of the bag more!!!
Now I just need to collect more hair… here kitty, kitty, kitty..
I had a furminator given to me but never used it. Tried it today on my long haired “cow kitty” and he LOVED IT! My tortie did too, but not as much. So, now I just need to find a bag…and the birds will be happy!
Thanks for the tip, Peaches. I’m sure they both feel better.
All hail the Furminator! It has made all the difference with my little Manx. Now, for those folks out there with shorthair, seemingly sleek kittehs who nonetheless shed all over the place: The Rake! It’s the curved or circular piece of steel with teeth on one side. It equals the Furminator in dead hair removal,
Now I’m off to buy a bag of oranges to stuff all this cat hair into.
What a great idea! I need to do this, my kitty explodes fairly often. lol Thanks for the heads up on the brush!
I could kiss you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I saw the brush when we were out doing errands yesterday and thought what the heck? Just went out on the porch w the pooch (shaggy mutt w some sort of long hair Caulker spaniel) —–the pile of fur that fell out was bigger than the cat! Here kitty kitty…………….
This has nothing to do with this specific post but I just had to comment. I just discovered your blog today and have been reading it for hours. I love everything about it – the paper flowers, the kitty, the plastic cup jewelry, all if it. Yea for you and yea for me for finding your blog.
Another fab idea-why be drab when you can be fab! I live in Portugal and I’m crazy about your blog-my friend in Australia sent me the link-dunno how she came across it. You inspire me every day………….you should see the daffodil wreaths my daughter and I are making for our Easter Sunday brunch from plastic yoghurt containers and milk cartons from our recycle bin-oh and found some old beads in the garage to funk it all up-all totally inspired by Aunt Peaches………
OMGoodness Keely and Annon, y’all are too kind. I am so glad you dropped by and hope you’ll come by again soon! PS: Send me a pic of that daffodil wreath!
Anne–I TOLD YOU! It’s amazing. I wish I had access to a sheep. I bet it would work…we could pull out enough wool to make our own sweaters!
If my husband wasn’t allergic, I would run out this moment and buy a cat and a furminator, just to make hairy cotton candy for the birds to use. Sadly, it can’t happen. I’ve been reading your blog for an hour yesterday and will fix myself a coffee this moment to read some more!
Sorry, I’m a little late to the party, but I just ran across this post. Furminator? Got one. Furgenerator? Got two. What to do with the result? Felt it. Grab it up, roll it into a ball, or snake, or a mouse shape (this one’s a big winner at my house), and then mash and continue forming it in your hands while holding it under warm running water. I sew a little loop on the end and attach it to Da Bird.
Lola is so beautiful! I love her little ear tufts! I have something similar, it is an undercoat brush… we have two furbabies,an orange tabby female(did you know that orange tabby females are unusual? they are usually male {80%/20%}) & a maine coon mix female, and the latter generates a LOT of fur! We often joke that we could make another whole cat with the fur! I usually roll it into balls for the cats to play with too!(hubby thinks this is gross :p)Now I know what else I can do with it!
Cat hair in your garden will deter your giant mutant rabbits