We recently got rid of an old, crappy, beat-down couch. We replaced it with a matching chair and footstool, and it now lives right next to some loaded bookshelves in a sort of reading nook.

One of the cats has claimed this setup as his own. He’ll spend some time on the chair, then loll a bit on the footstool, then it’s back to the chair. And if you want to sit on the chair, sometimes he’ll try to squeeze in there with you. Of our two cats, one who sheds mountains and has no hairballs and one who barely sheds but is a hairball queen, it’s the shedder who’s claimed this chair.

As you can see, he finds the chair terribly uncomfortable. And also as you may be able to see, he’s coated the chair with a fine layer of hair. Orange, brown, and the off-white of his fluffy undercoat. I’ve tried a giant lint roller to get the hair up, but it takes a long time and a LOT of sticky sheets to get even close to all the hair.

In looking around the internets, however, I discovered the Pet Hair Magnet. Which appeared to be nothing more than a common rubber squeegee. So on our grocery trip today, we spent less than half the price of the Pet Hair Magnet on a common rubber squeegee. And my friends, it totally works!

Look at the difference! The right side of the footstool is nice and clean. Of course, I had a small, furry supervisor watching over the entire project. After squeeging, I did a quick once-over with the lint roller to get rid of some stray hairs, and the chair and footstool look shiny and new again.

Of course, now the cat is agitated and mewing at me. Because I took away his protective coating of hair. He was building a nest there, I guess.

Here’s a LOLcat that actually made me laugh out loud. Which rarely happens.

Of all of you out there watching Dancing with the Stars, is there anyone else who dislikes Cloris Leachman? I feel like I’m in the minority here — the reality round-up I read has an author who’s all, Cloris is still in it! Yay! I just find her irritating, and desperately trying to amuse us, and there’s just no joy in her for me whatsover.

I’m meeting up with some Comedy Warehouse folk this afternoon at the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Most countries also have beer, however. Which is good for us wine-haters.

We took a videogame break from shooting people in Venezuela (yay, Mercenaries 2!) so that I could go shoot people in Rapture (yay, Bioshock!) for a while. I upped the difficulty to medium, which is a first for me in FPS games. Usually I’m all about the easy. The game is awesome as ever, and even more awesome with all the lights out. If I finish up Rapture too quickly, I may then go run around Whispering Rock Summer Camp (yay, Psychonauts!) for a while.

More worrisome things have been tackled, causing the excitement v. terror balance to swing even more toward excitement.

Our “ReloCube” is reserved, and we have the OK from the apartment building to put it in a parking spot next to the building over the last weekend of the month.

I checked with our car insurance (Allstate), and we’re well-covered on the new car. Also, even though we’ll need to switch to another agent when we move, our coverage is good to go for the long drive and the time it takes to set up residency.

Scott’s heart is lighter, because I found out that there are approximately 3500 open jobs right now at WDW (with current full-time openings in Attractions [ride operators], Monorail, Downtown Disney Ticketing and much more), and tons of apartments to be had. Heck, one lady I contacted wanted me to fill out and fax back an application without even seeing an apartment — they want new tenants that desperately. So we shouldn’t have a problem when we go a-hunting.

After their terrifying vet ordeal yesterday, where they each shed a ton of hair, the cats are incredibly soft and smell really good. Weird how that works.

I took the cats to the vet this morning, to get general checkups and get a health certificate so they can fly. Poor little fraidy cats, they were real champs — they meowed a lot, and did some cowering, but were fairly cooperative with the vet. Nobody likes getting the ol’ rectal thermometer, or the rabies vaccination shot in the haunch.

The vet recommended something called “Rescue Remedy” for the flight — supposedly it will mellow them out enough so it’s not 6 hours of “Mew. Mew. Mew. Mew.” Poor guys. They’re both overweight, with Trouble clocking in at 13.5 pounds and Commie at an impressive 16 pounds. So as soon as we settle in at the other end of this adventure, it’s diet time.

I took them in their old hardside carriers. We have new softside ones for the flight, but I didn’t want to create a negative memory of the new carriers just yet. The new carriers are sitting open on the floor, so they can hop in and out of them at will and get used to them.

They’re mostly back to normal now, and don’t seem to be harboring any specific ill will toward me.

It’s amazing how one cat can watch the other cat being given a bath, and just not realize that they’re next.

Commie watched Trouble receive her bath — in fact, he got up on his tippy-toes so he could look into the bathtub and get an eyeful of the proceedings. It was almost like he was laughing at her. “Look what Mommy and Daddy are doing to you, Trouble! I’m sure glad I’m over here, a foot away, where I’m completely safe! Ha ha ha!” But overall, Trouble was the easier cat to bathe. Smaller, not as strong, and when it was all over, she sat on the bath mat so I could towel her off. Commie, however, is now hiding under the couch, much more damp and fairly miserable. Even the smell of wet cat food won’t bring him out of his exile.

It’s a good thing we only do this every 6 months or so. Nobody remembers what’s going to happen when we bring out the big pink bowl and the apple-smelling cat shampoo.