Happiness is . . .

A new vacuum cleaner.

My new home contains beautiful hardwood and marble flooring. Unfortunately, my two cats seems to shed an enormous amount of hair, so much so that it was gathering in huge dust bunnies (or should that be dust kitties), throughout the apartment. So much so that when Susan was here she felt compelled to mention it.

Not to mention the kitty litter that they seem to track out of their own special kitty litter room.

I'd desperately been searching for the right cleaning solution to keep the dust/cat hair at bay. I looked all over the city for a Swiffer after one of my colleagues told me you could buy them at Carrefour (a French "hypermarket"), only to spend 40 PLN on a taxi to get there and then find out the next day that he realized he had a Swiffer when he lived in London, not in Krakow.

I ended up buying a dust mop, but that only seemed to displace the dust and cat hair around, not actually get rid of it.

Finally, I talked one of my employees into going to the mall with me to translate all the features of the various vacuum cleaners for me.

I spent Friday night putting the vacuum cleaner together (the manual had an English section!) and happily clearing away the reams of cat hair.

I wonder how long it will take to reappear.

Note - apparently Zelmar is the favoured vacuum cleaner brand in Poland. Even the woman who sold me the LG I bought said that even though she represented LG, she would prefer a Zelmar. However, I ended up getting the LG for its many hardwood floor and furniture attachments. So far so good.