Collection: Pets

Measure the animal, not the photo

Every returned pet product starts the same way. The photo showed a cat that fit, and the cat in the photo was not your cat. Listing photos are shot with whichever animal made the shape look right, so a pouch that swallows a 7 lb (3 kg) kitten leaves a 14 lb (6 kg) tom with his back half hanging out of it.

There is no shared sizing language across pet goods either. Small, medium and large mean whatever the maker decided, and they shift between a bed, a harness and a hood on the same page. The only number that survives that is one you took yourself, off your own animal, with a soft tape or a piece of string you then hold against a ruler.

Take the measurement before you shop and compare it against the inches and centimeters in the listing rather than the word. If a listing gives no dimensions at all, that is your answer.

What to measure, item by item

Each kind of object has one measurement that decides everything and several that do not matter. These are the ones that decide.

Where a cat will actually sleep

Cats do not pick beds, they pick spots, and then they accept whatever is in the spot. That is the whole reason a $60 bed sits empty next to a cardboard box. Before buying anything, watch for a week and note the three places she already sleeps. Those places share features you can then shop for: height off the floor, a wall or a piece of furniture at her back, sun for part of the day, and a view of the door.

On soft against firm, the answer is usually both at once. A cat wants a soft surface to lie on and a firm edge to press against, which is why a bolstered bed with a raised rim gets used and a flat mat gets walked over. A donut or a pouch with sides does this by design. A slab of memory foam with no lip does not.

Enclosed beds, caves and pouches work for cats that already sleep under things: beneath the bed, inside a wardrobe, behind the couch. A cat that sleeps on top of things in the open will treat a cave as a piece of furniture and sit on its roof. Watch first, then buy, and put the new bed exactly where the old spot was rather than where you would like it to be.

Why a scratcher gets used or ignored

Three things decide it: texture, angle and location. Get the location wrong and the other two do not matter, because a scratcher on the far side of the room is not competing with the couch arm your cat has already chosen. Put the new one directly in front of the damaged spot for the first two weeks, then move it a few inches a week if you want it somewhere else.

Angle matters more than people expect. A cat that shreds a rug scratches horizontally and will ignore a tall post; a cat that reaches up the door frame scratches vertically and will ignore a flat board. Watch which one yours does, then buy that shape. A scratcher also has to be longer than the full stretch of the cat and heavy or fixed enough not to slide, since one skid across the floor is usually enough to retire it.

Hair is the daily tax

A lint roller lifts what is sitting on top of the fabric. It does nothing about the hair that has worked its way into a weave, and on a boucle or a chenille couch it is close to useless. What pulls embedded hair out is friction plus a little static: a rubber or silicone glove, a mesh pad, or a plain kitchen glove dampened and dragged in one direction. The hair rolls up into a rope you can pick off in one piece.

One direction is the part people skip. Back and forth pushes hair deeper into the weave and works it around the fibers. Always pull toward yourself, lift, and start again from the same edge. On woven upholstery, do a pass with a barely damp glove and a second dry pass once it has dried, since the damp pass raises what is embedded and the dry pass collects it.

The rest is fabric choice. Tight flat weaves in a mid tone hide and release hair; loose loops and velvet hold onto it. If your animal has a favorite cushion, give it a washable cover and wash that cover in cold water with no fabric softener, because softener leaves a coating that makes fabric hold hair rather than shed it.

Water away from the house

The number repeated most often is roughly one fluid ounce of water per pound of body weight per day, so about 50 oz (1.5 L) for a 50 lb dog. Treat that as a rough figure rather than a rule, since heat, effort and food all move it, and your vet's number for your dog beats any figure on a shopping page. For a walk you are carrying a fraction of the daily total: 10 to 12 oz (300 to 350 ml) covers most hour long walks, and a hike in summer wants double that.

Bottle design matters more than capacity. The useful ones have a trough that folds over the top and a one way channel that returns what the dog does not drink back into the bottle, which is what keeps you from pouring half of it onto the sidewalk. Check that the lock holds with the bottle upside down in a bag, because a leak in a backpack is the reason most of these get abandoned.

Rinse it the day you use it. A film builds on the inside of the trough within a few days of sitting damp with saliva in it, and once it is established you can feel it with a fingertip. Warm water, a drop of dish soap and a bottle brush handles it. Leaving it to dry with the lid open is what stops it coming back.

Paws at the door

The mess that gets tracked in is not on the top of the paw, it is packed between the pads. A towel by the door wipes the outside and leaves the grit, road salt in winter and the wet in the middle, and the wet is what carries the smell into the couch an hour later.

A paw cup works because the silicone bristles reach between the pads. Fill to the marked line with lukewarm water, dip, twist or let it spin for about ten seconds per paw, then dry immediately with a towel worked between each toe. Skipping the drying step undoes the wash, since damp fur between the pads is exactly the condition you were trying to remove.

Empty and rinse the cup after each use rather than at the end of the week. It holds dirty water in a warm closed cylinder, which is a smell in waiting, and a cup that smells is a cup that the dog starts refusing to put a foot in.

You are buying for the household too

Almost everything here is a hollow with an animal in or against it: a pouch, a cave, an aquarium tunnel, a cup for a paw. The animal decides whether it gets used, and you live with the rest of it, which is worth saying out loud before you buy. That bed sits in your living room for the next three years, and a cat is entirely indifferent to whether it matches the couch.

As a gift for someone else's animal, size is the trap. Anything the animal has to fit into or wear needs a measurement you do not have, so give the things that fit any size: a scratching board, a grooming glove, a water bottle, a tunnel for a tank. Save the fitted items for animals you have measured yourself.

And accept the ratio. A good share of what you buy for an animal gets ignored whatever it cost, so favor the things you would still want in the room if that happens, and keep the receipt on the rest.