Cat Hair like Tumbleweeds
28 February 2005
The first time I saw a tumbleweed I was driving down a barren stretch of Interstate 35 in southern Kansas on my way to Texas. All around me the land was barren and dusty. I had seen neither a house nor a car for many miles and I was driving in a slight daze.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I noticed some movement and when I looked, I saw a large ball dance across the road ahead of me. Instantly I knew it was a tumbleweed because it looked just like they always do in the movies. As I passed it, it just kept rolling and rolling and rolling along the deserted landscape.
Now days, I always picture this scene whenever I clean my house. I don’t picture it because my house is barren (though it is quite dusty) or because it has an “Old West” feel to it. I picture it because everyday I pick up tumbleweeds of my own.
However, my tumbleweeds are not the skeletal remains of the once green “Russian thistle” that break away from their roots in the autumn and are driven by the wind as light, rolling masses over fields and prairies. No, my tumbleweeds are grayish-brown and when I remove them from the nooks and crannies that the breeze has rolled them into, they are soft.
This is because my tumbleweeds are made of the loose cat fur that floats aimlessly around my house. Somehow, all this cat fur mysteriously attracts until it forms one or more balls and, just like tumbleweeds, is driven by the breezes as light rolling masses throughout my house. And like the tumbleweed that spreads its seed so far and wide that it continues to multiply, no matter how many of my cat hair tumbleweeds I pick up and throw away, there always seem to be more.
Yes, both are pests, turn up in the oddest places, and are never-ending. Therefore, is it really any wonder that I should compare the two?
