Light colored carpeting in the new home, and cats that yak a lot. What is the better solution,

a wet vac or a little steam cleaner? (No, getting rid of the carpet and/or the cats are not options. :P)

I'd get some of those. That way, when you hear the horking start, you can at least move the cat onto the plastic real quick.

home to deal with it.

It really does work for taking the worst out, IMO. Now, my carpet is light brown, not really pale, but it has taken out cat yak, red wine, and coffee, so that's something.


(Personally, I think light-colored carpet is an abomination. I do not think it's pretty and I do not understand why it exists. If I'm ever in a position to be able to dictate specifics of my living space, I won't have it. If I'm ever Queen of the World, I will make it illegal. It serves no function but to enable rich people to congratulate themselves about how well they treat the "help" who clean it, and to make middle-class-and-below people feel guilty for doing stuff like eating and walking.)

or non-staining cat food.

stinky but effective. I dip a brush into some and scrub and voila, gone.

test in a hidden spot first, what with all the different makeup and chems in carpets and stuff for possible bad effects.
don't need no fancy store bought for stain removal.

also, pure vinegar in a spray bottle (for glass cleaning) is just as good or better than commercial sprays. I swear.

I've used the Woolite Oxy cleaner successfully when it happens here even when the yak wasn't that fresh. The key is to clean up the spot as soon as possible and follow the directions on the can.

My oldest kitty has chronic renal failure, and he suffers from tummy troubles. Even before he got sick, he regurgitated his food. I am frequently cleaning up cat barf, and Woolite Oxy seems to work the best. I have another tip that you might find helpful--if you can stand to do it. It's kind of gross, but I found out by accident that dried barf is easier to clean than the fresh stuff. This is especially handy if your cat upchucks some canned food. Pick up as much of it as you can without smearing it, and let the rest dry. The vast majority of it will vacuum up. Then, go back and clean any stain that might be there. If there's lots of hair in it, it will just peel up when dried. When canned food barf is fresh, it just tends to smear into the carpet when you try to clean it, making it worse. Woolite Oxy will completely remove stains from even the dried stuff.

It helps prevent hairballs that cats gack up.

Brushing your cat a lot when they start to shed/molt.

Resolve carpet cleaner and paper towels are nice.

I may have to go over it a couple of times, but eventually it gets out the stains.. we have 3 cats and our carpet is not in real good shape anymore. My best solution will to tear up the carpet and put in wood flooring or laminate wood flooring, it seems that it would be so much easier to clean up after the cats finish yakking.

On cream colored carpeting, no less. :crazy:

I agree with the posters up-thread. Woolite Oxy seems to work best.

LEMME AT 'EM

you can just spot rub the spot clean. Then rent a steam cleaner twice a year. My dad bought a steam cleaner and it was never very good.

I love this stuff. When I bought my house the person that owned kept the dogs in the garage (sometimes) and they'd potty out there. It smelled like pee and it was concrete. My husband scrubbed the concrete with bleach, pine sol, all kinds of stuff nothing worked. Someone told me about Nature's Miracle, and it got the smell out.

I've used it for everything since. It works on pet stains, food stains, etc. I dropped a cake on the rug two weeks ago, and used this to clean it up. It took all the "food" smell out, my dogs didn't even realize anything had been dropped, or they would have been eating the color off the carpet to get to it.

It even works on old stains.