How to Make Your Home More Comfortable for Guests With Cat Allergies
It’s so hard when your close friends can’t hang out at your house because your best friend, the cat, lives there. If you do decide to get rid of your allergic kidneys, there are several ways you can help mitigate any potential allergic reactions.
First of all, TELL THEM about the cat. People with allergies can have a wide range of reactions, from mild to potentially fatal. Or even just annoying and unpleasant. It is their decision to take a chance; If so, here are some things you can do to make their visit more bearable.
Vacuum early, not in the day
This first idea comes from u / MrCaspan at r / LifeProTips; when carrying out preparatory cleaning for a visitor who does not like cats, doing it on the day of the week can aggravate the situation:
If people come to you and they cause allergies [sic] to your cats, don’t vacuum the house during the day, but the day before. If you vacuum a day, the dandruff will rise in the air and it will only get worse!
Shaking the air right before someone enters your space is a bad idea when the air is full of particles that make them sick. Instead, clean the day before and allow any remaining dust to settle. Some commentators have suggested that the OP simply doesn’t have a quality vacuum cleaner, and that the best vacuum cleaner will pick up dust and dandruff rather than just get in the way, but they insist that even a vacuum cleaner with a great filter will “throw up debris.” to the air. God saves man, who save himself.
Have a safe place to sit down
The comments on this tip were full of other helpful suggestions; for example u / slytherpuffenclaw recommends having a special stool that is less prone to absorbing dandruff:
Bonus tip: have a chair on hand that is NOT Cloth to suggest instead of a seat. Sitting in fabric stools can prevent allergies or buy time before the allergies bother them.
And u / Fleshfeast , who is allergic to cats, agrees that it works:
This. I will have an asthma attack within half an hour if I touch the carpet or fabric the cat has been on. I can sit on a metal or wooden chair in the cat’s house for an hour or two and everything will be fine as long as the cat is gone.
Cats are also more attracted to sitting on fluffy, fabric-covered things, and they are less likely to spend time sitting in a chair without anything cozy. They really know how to live luxuriously.
Have a room without cats
This is not something I could do in my apartment, but for people with a lot of space, a luxurious cat-free room is the perfect solution; your allergy friends are safe and there is a place in the house where you can go without getting hair on your pants. This is what u / monster_mentalissues does:
We have a pet-free room in our house, so if our furbabi allergy friends come along, they’ll have a safe place to hang out.
The only difficulty is that, in my experience, a cat always knows exactly which room she shouldn’t enter and spends as much time as possible standing at the door. Watch your feet go in and out!
Check your filters
Do you have an air purifier or access to an oven filter? Check them, clean and replace if possible. Then run them as u / im_not_a_grill suggests :
Also, replace the oven filter with a high quality HEPA filter and run the oven fan all day to purify the air in your home.
While you are doing this, open windows.
Keep your allergy medicine at home
It may take a while for the allergy medication to take effect, and your guest may have already prepared themselves by taking Benadryl before arriving. But it doesn’t hurt to have sleep-deprived antihistamines on hand in case they decide they need them.
Have a backup plan
If your cat allergic friend is kind enough to try and hang yourself in your home, be kind enough to make a plan of where you can go if that doesn’t work. Nearby coffee shop, park, bar – just keep plan B in mind. Be sure to check and ask how they feel. Be prepared to leave the house and cat for the whole day.