Tuesday, August 12, 2008

On furminators

So, I bought one. It was $24, not $65 like one I'd seen before.

It's probably worth $24. I cannot imagine a brush worth $65, unless it actually did the brushing for me. And stood around looking sultry with it's shirt off for my amusement the rest of the time.

It is decidedly more effective than other brushes we've used. The previous standard was those wire slicker type brushes. This was significantly faster than the slicker brushes. For one, you would get in one stroke what took five or ten with the slicker. Second, the flat 'comb' structure made it much easier to pull the hair out than with brush styles. Finally, with the slicker, you would brush for a couple loads, and you would start getting much less fur. The furminator kept getting fur for a much longer time, despite pulling it out faster.

I didn't have a problem with raw skin, or bald patches like I've heard in other reviews. The cats seemed to like it as much as any other brush, i.e. they wandered around and rolled on the floor and purred and tried to eat it and generally made things inconvenient until they got sick of it and just left. The biggest problem was the tail, since it's hard to brush all sides of a small round thing. That's really saying quite a bit, if you get to the point that the biggest shedding problem on the cat is the tail though.

Since it did work out, I'd like to get one of the bamboo off-brand styles for my mother's cats (who have pretty significant hairball issues). When I do, we'll do a furminator vs. off brand review shootout!
(Though, at $24, it wasn't a huge savings over the off brand anyway, but your market may vary)

No comments: