Do cats have some sort of hair factory as an unnamed internal organ?

Perhaps I need to consult a theoretical physicist. I think what I see every week may be some sort of violation of the laws of nature.

To put it another way, how can a single cat weighing in at perhaps 16 or 17 pounds (yes, he is a big boy), create what appears to be double his weight in cat hair without ever looking any smaller, balder, or even a bit winded? And how can said cat hair exhibit properties that seem almost magical?

Yes, we do have four cats in our home these days. All four would be what one would consider examples of the domestic short-hair variety. So again, I ask, how can one in particular, Lemon, and to a lesser degree, Romeo, create so much hair? If I vacuum the house every three to four days, I pick up enough hair each and every time, to easily construct a new cat.

Do cats have some sort of hair factory as an unnamed internal organ? They just push out new hairs on a minute-by-minute basis and so, wherever they walk, lie, groom, eat, or pretty much exist, there’s hair there.

There’s hair on the carpet, the floor, the furniture, the clothes, the towels, the counters, the chairs, and pretty much any horizontal surface. And the question is how do they manage this feat? If humans grew hair at this pace, we’d all have 20-foot ponytails every three weeks and hair stylists would be the most highly paid professionals on the planet.

And how does the hair get into places that aren’t even visited by the cats? I can open a bag of pretzels from a cabinet that’s six feet off the floor and can’t be reached by the cats (of course I could be wrong and they’re using jet packs while I’m asleep). It’s a new bag and as soon as I reach in for a pretzel, I notice a cat hair on it. Is there are cloud of cat hair invisible to the naked eye that forms and deposits anytime a person does anything? Is it like a rainstorm of cat hair that lives in the homes of cat owners?

I jokingly suggested we have the cats shaved or spray them with Nair but I suspect it still wouldn’t work. I actually met (and petted) a hairless cat last year and perhaps that’s the answer. Of course they do look rather odd, and have skin issues (sun sensitivity among others) so, if I wanted to let the cat out to roam, I’d have to hit it with a good coat of spf 30 and then reapply every so often. Yeah, not so sure that’ll work out.

So, since I can successfully vacuum up a lot of the hair, should I then start vacuuming the cats themselves? I can just see this. I walk up to the cat in question, who is stretched out in a sunbeam, fire up the utterly silent vacuum and then proceed to suck away all the loose hair.

The vacuum fills up, smoke pours from it, and I wake up from the dream. I turn over groggily, realizing that there’s no such thing as a silent vacuum.

Besides, the cats, upon seeing the vacuum, usually jet of for parts unknown within three microseconds; rendering the act pretty much pointless. I know that two or three of the four will allow themselves to be brushed at times, but the brush clogs too fast and the resulting area gets so covered in hair, that you just have to vacuum anyway.

Those large tape rollers that you use to get stuff off your clothes just before you head off to work, or the wedding, or a job interview, are interesting. The ones we have work fine to a point.

You tear off the outer sheet and proceed to roll it over the surface. After three inches, it’s covered in cat hair. You peel off the layer, keep rolling, more hair, another layer and so on until you have a perfectly clean couch cushion, and you’re standing amidst a two-foot pile of cat-hair-covered tape.

Then Lemon comes over and lies down on the clean cushion. Oh, and once you gather all the cat-hair-covered tape and toss it in the trash, Sylvie wanders over, knocks the trash over, and proceeds to chew on the tape, as she has a thing for adhesive products. Really, I’m not making this up.

So what to do about the cat hair, that sheds, rains, appears, and seems to reproduce without a cat even being nearby? Well, we have two vacuums, lint rollers, cat brushes, and special brushes designed to remove cat hair from furniture and fabrics.

We could spend several hours a day combatting the cat hair until, for at most, 65 seconds, the house is utterly cat hair free. Or, we could just vacuum a couple times a week and call it even. That’s where I’m at for now.

But my hope is that by studying the weird behavior of cat hair and making some sort of incredible discovery that sets modern theoretical physics on its ear, I’ll win the Nobel. Then I can get enough cash to hire someone to vacuum for me. I can dream.

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he would have gone further with this column, but he had to go vacuum the back of a green couch that now looks white.