I live with two wonderful cats – Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue. But, oh man, do they shed fine white fur all over everything. Did I mention I’m allergic to cats?
So I set out to control the fur at the source: vacuum the loose fur right off the boys. A CatVac prototype was born.
I knew I wanted a quiet and gentle vacuum as to not traumatize the boys. Fur is light and doesn’t require a lot of velocity to move it so I kept that in mind as I selected the heart of the system: the fan.
There are 3 major kinds of fans: axial, mixed-flow, and centrifugal.
- Axial fans can move a lot of flow but don’t have much push (i.e. can’t generate too much pressure). Examples: window / box fans
- Centrifugal fans can generate a good amount of push (or pull in the vacuum’s case) but tend to be noisy. Examples: furnace blowers, “squirrel cage” fan
- Mixed-flow fans are somewhere between axial and centrifugal, and a great first pick for the CatVac – quiet, but has enough pull to slurp up loose fur.
Prototype Bill of Materials
- Mixed-flow fan, 4″ dia connection
- 4″ dia clear, flexible, spiral duct work
- 14″ x 14″ furnace filter
- 14″ square woodworking dust collectors, x2
- Cardboard, cardboard paper and tape
Results
Mr. Blue didn’t seem to mind the CatVac at all, but he’s loves any kind of attention. Mr. Brown just tolerated the CatVac.
The CatVac certainly did collect fur!
Ultimately, the prototype was too bulky to move around (it’s critical to bring the grooming to the cats), still too noisy to put the boys at ease, and would require a daily routine to really prevent the typical mitigation of fur from cat to everything else.
My follow-on idea would be a CatVac tunnel: a quiet and gentle vacuuming, grooming tunnel that the boys would have to go through often, e.g. their food dish is at the other end 😉
