My husband and I married right out of graduate school for me and law school for him so our first few years definitely had that feeling of “playing house.” Once we had managed to keep a plant alive (an astoundingly hardy basil plant), we felt ready to graduate to animals. Our first, Calypso, is a sweet and acrobatic Russian Blue but we were determined that our second adoptee would be a shelter pet.
We searched every Texas shelter and pet rescue in a 30 mile radius but we just couldn’t find our kitty–finally we spotted him! He was a little fluffier than we wanted but incredibly sweet. We took him out of the crate and he immediately perched on my husband’s shoulder like a parrot.
According to the shelter workers, he was nearly a year old and fully grown–boy were they wrong! We brought Loki to the vet, like responsible pet owners, only to discover he was much younger and would still grow quite a bit more. As Loki grew (and grew, and grew), so did the length of his hair. Loki is so ridiculously fluffy around his hind quarters that we joke he looks like a yak. One time he wandered out to greet guests at a party and someone exclaimed, “What is that? Is that…a cat?”
We love our giant cat/yak but we aren’t as enamored of his attempts to reproduce by shedding giant furballs.
That’s where Swiffer comes in. On a lark, I grabbed a Swiffer Sweeper (like the ones in the Swiffer Big Green Box) at the grocery store–I had only ever used mop and bucket before–and it was like a revelation! Wrangling cat hair dust bunnies was now a breeze.
Now Swiffer has even more awesome products to clean my whole house. Would you believe we find cat hair even on the blades of our ceiling fans? Swiffer’s Dusters are a lot easier to use and more efficient than a paper towel.
We’d never let even Loki-levels of copious cat hair stop us from adopting a pet but according to the Swiffer Cleaning Index, half of Americans say that concerns about pet hair and shedding in their home is one of the top reasons they worry about getting a pet, wouldn’t get a pet or don’t have one. More than one third (38 percent) of pet owners also say the leading source of “pet cleaning tensions” in their home is hair, dust bunnies and/or shedding.
Since Swiffer is a shedding clean-up solution, it makes perfect sense they are partnering with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA) in a year-long effort to help find homes for animals in need. To help reach this goal, Swiffer will donate Big Green Boxes to more than 100 shelters nationwide and is gifting each of an estimated 7,000 pet adopters with a free Swiffer Sweeper during the ASPCA Mega-Match-A-Thon the weekend of October 17-19.
Once we had a baby, it became even more important that we keep the floors swept clean of fur–you don’t want your little one swallowing a furball! I’m on my fourth little crawler and we appreciate that Swiffer helps us keep the floors clean and allows us to just enjoy our pets and our family.
Thank you, Swiffer, for sending me a Big Green Box to use in my household and another to surprise my pet-owning friend–check out her reaction below!
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
