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| Kittens and flypapers are not a good match. Should have known, this flypaper seems to catch elephants too! |
I just moved to a new house, with a bunch of my cats, and I finally have my own kitchen. For some reason it's a season for flies, they are everywhere. So, clever as I am, I bought some flypaper, the sticky one with glue or something, and opened one and left it on the kicthen counter, to be able to cook without flies driving me crazy. No worries, sticky paper there, just flies had a reason to be careful. Or so it seemed.
As I went to take a shower, I suddenly hear loud cry of a kitten and heard things falling. Total mayhem, it sounded like. I ran outside to see what the hell is going on, and there was my kitten Seek, running around in complete panic, totally stuck in the flypaper and had even managed to get a small carpet stuck to the mess. So it was a kitten, a flypaper and a carpet, all in one fast moving, sticky craziness. I rescued Seek, but half of her was totally covered in the glue.
I washed the kitten immediately with soap, and she totally hated it. She screamed like I was killing her, and then her mommy got all crazy and came for a rescue. Soap did not help much, even after washing Seek got stuck to everything she touched: sheets, towels, grass, ants, leaves... anything there was. All night she tried to clean herself, by pulling the sticky fur out, and she did not look happy at all. I did not know what the hell to do.
The next morning I went to visit my dive shop, the awsome Lutwala Dive, and told about what happened (they love cats at Lutwala, too!). Trish from Lutwala went straight away to her computer to search what to do. She found lots of tips for a case like this, so it seems cats get themselves in trouble with flypaper A LOT. Trish found someone telling that rubbing ghee (kind of butter) to the cat's fur and then washing with shampoo does the trick. Need to try that! And it just happened that Trish had some ghee in her fridge and gave me some. Super-mega-special-extra-thanks to Trish!
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| Seek after ghee-massage and shampoo wash. Not a happy kitten! |
And she soon realized how to reduce the greasiness: go roll on dirt! A lot! And often! It seems to work, but now... I'm quite sure she is the dirties, smelliest kitten of the neighbourhood. Poor thing! But she's been like this since she was born: always going nose first everywhere without thinking if that's wise or not. Her brother Destroy (yes, they are called Seek and Destroy), he likes to wait and see what happens when Seek checks things out first and if it looks ok, or funny, Destroy follows.
I may tell you Seek and Destroy's story later on, since I was there when they were born, and I have been there ever since. They are mine, and I love them to bits.
But: no more fly papers on my household, at least not if I am not guarding the paper with my life. I'm sure I can laugh at this later on, but it's not so funny right now when a dirty smelly greasy kitten wants to sleep next to you. Just as I wrote this, she came, jumped on my lap and looks - and smells - like she just crawled out from sewer. But what can you do? She's been through a lot, she needs some TLC. And my sheets and clothes need some washing up!
So in case anyone else encounters this problem with cats and flypapers: ghee is the answer! I'm pretty sure basic cooking oil or just ordinary butter would work too. But I can assure you: it's much more easier to just keep one eye on your cats and another eye on the flypaper....
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| Dirtiest smelliest kitten in da hood |
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| Looking for more trouble |
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| Happily in a tree |
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