If you have ever had cats or kittens, then you probably have encountered hairballs. Hairballs occur in cats from their constant grooming. As they groom and lick their fur they ingest some, and if they get enough it forms a hairball that usually will get vomited up. Sometimes hairballs can get trapped inside and create a blockage and more severe problems.
Some good ways to help with hairball prevention will be covered here. A good place to start is with a good slicker brush, or a similar grooming tool. You can use a regular brush, but a slicker brush is able to remove more loose and dead hair from your pet. If you have a long hair cat, brush him or her daily or as frequently as possible. All of the hair that you remove is less hair that they will ingest.
If your cat has trouble with hairballs, it is a good idea to use hairball treatments such as Petromalt or a similar treatment. One cat owner told us that he would just put about an inch of this on his finger and his cat would lick it off. Sometimes, if he was in a hurry, he would just wipe it on the bottom or top of his cat’s mouth and the cat would eat it. He reports that the cat usually liked it quite a bit.
By using these methods you may eliminate hairballs in your cat completely.
Some good slicker brushes are:
Ultimate Touch Slicker Brush
G-Soft Slicker Brush
Safari Slicker Brush
Lil Pals Slicker Brush
Evo Self Clean Slicker Brush
Safari Self-Clean Slicker Brush
Hamsters and gerbils are among the most popular small pets. This is not surprising as these small creatures make very good pets and can be quite lovable. They are easy to look after, relatively inexpensive, and are usually easy to hand-tame. They can be found in many different varieties, do not take up much space and don’t require much work to keep.
Hamsters get their name from the German word “hamstern” which means to hoard. This is a reference to a their food gathering habits. Hamsters are capable of building a food stash the size of 100 bags of sugar! Hamsters are members of the rodent family, and although most hamsters today are related to wild golden hamsters from the Middle East – in particular Syria, some hamsters originate from China and Russia too! In the wild they live solitary lives in deep burrows in the desert. Their lifespan is about 2 to 3 years.
Gerbils are native to the desert regions of Mongolia and northeastern China and live in burrows in the wild, where they often live in groups. Gerbils were first discovered by Pere David who also discovered the giant panda in China. Like hamsters, gerbils come in a variety of colors and subspecies. The “Mongolian Desert Gerbil” is a common variety, though this is only one of more than 100 different gerbil species that are found living in Asia and also Africa, where Asian gerbils have migrated over time. Gerbils can exist peacefully with others, and make friendly and social pets. However, it is best to introduce gerbils together when they are very young.
