I love furry-fluffy cats. For me it’s “what’s the point of a cat if it doesn’t have a lot of luxurious fur?” As those of you with cats know, with fur comes challenges and most of them have to do with physical labor—dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, swiffering, mopping, rolling, brushing, sponging… You know the drill.
There are also lifestyle changes. Over the 
years I’ve relinquished most of my dark-colored clothes because I had light-colored cats. What was I thinking when I adopted a long-haired calico??? Now we’re dealing with black fur and white fur. Now everything in my closet shows fur.
I brush and I comb, still my new portable vacuum picks up astounding amounts of fur (and litter). I have checked that machine over to see if there’s any way it could be manufacturing fur and litter inside the mechanism. I run it over what I perceive to be only slightly dusty floors and ultimately 
empty a full container of FUR. Unbelievable.
Then there are the mats. Some cats are prone to matting. Sophie dodged that bullet having been born with very short fur. And she’s the one who loves being combed and brushed. LOVES it. Then came Olivia. Her black and red fur is lovely—satiny, soft and manageable. But the white on her very touchy tummy is baby fine and it mats. Bummer. Too late to return Olivia as being defective (and adverse to brushing and combing and mat-picking). So we deal with tangles when we can without getting slashed with claws and teeth. It’s called a sneak attack when the enemy is off guard.
Yeah, I wait until she’s super relaxed in my lap, then I intermingle petting and cheek-and-neck scratching with a little mat-picking. So far we have no large problems, which is the point of frequent checks on the trouble spots and working with them as long as Olivia tolerates it. I tell her, “Sweetie, you’re a star. Where’s your sense of body-pride?”
Her response—at least in body language is “My floofy tummy, my mats. Leave me alone.”
