do you have any advice on how to clean plushies of fleas? one of my cats escaped and I think she may have gotten them and spread all over my bed/stuffies :(((
i once bought a stuffed frog from a garage sale who was full of fleas! this is what i did and it worked….
1. put the stuffed animals in a garbage bag and tie it shut as tight as you can.
leave them in there for 30 full days! this should be long enough to starve any fleas. eggs that hatch during this time should die off as well.
2. hand wash them like normal with dawn dish soap and lukewarm water.
make sure to rinse them off super well! you should see the dead fleas coming off the plush!
if you can’t get this plush wet, i’d recommend vacuuming them on a low setting and then spraying them with disinfectant spray instead of washing. lysol and other similar sprays can leave a gross residue on the plush, so i’d recommend fursuit spray. you can buy some online or even make your own!
3. let the plushies air dry in front of a fan. don’t forget to occasionally rotate the plush so that they dry faster! air drying can take anywhere from 1-3 days depending on the plush and how wet they were. plushies with bean pellets will take longer to dry than ones with only stuffing!
4. after the plush is dry, comb the fur and make sure there’s no remaining fleas!
5. as a last protective measure you could spray with disinfectant spray! fursuit spray works the best, because it’s specifically made for fake fur and will NOT leave behind gross residue :)
if you can’t wait for the 30 days, you could try just washing the plush. hot water should kill fleas BUT it can damage the plushie if it has glue. sometimes hair, eyes, or noses are glued on. the hot water can melt the glue, and cause the items to fall off. so be careful.
you might be able to try washing plushies with flea killing shampoo, but i have no idea if that will leave a residue on the plush or not. if it does leave a residue, you can always soak the plush in diluted vinegar for 30 minutes. that should remove any gross residue left behind.
make sure to treat all your pets for fleas as well!! it doesn’t matter how well you clean the plushies, if your pets still have fleas they can just crawl right back on the plush!
i hope your cat is doing well! it sounds like she had an exciting little adventure! i’m really sorry about the fleas tho :(
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The Power of Music
Another Breath of the Wild TF, for randomwolf91. He wanted Kass, so...here’s Kass.
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Cosplay, as a hobby, can be kind of a difficult one to get into. It requires a lot of investment - both in terms of time and money. Depending on the level you want to go to, how accurate and complex you want to make your cosplay, you can be shelling out a lot of money for materials and props, and then using up a lot of time sewing, cutting, molding...it's pretty understandable why a lot of people don't go to quite the effort.
Loez himself didn't think he'd ever want to make the effort initially. He didn't think he had the money or time to spend on that kind of thing, let alone a character he'd WANT to expend that amount of effort on. It's funny how quickly things can change. See, a game had come out - a new Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. It was undoubtedly a fantastic game, a joy to see a Zelda game go truly open world, but aside from that...there was this one character. A character Loez had found himself a little...enamoured with, shall we say.
His name was Kass, and he was a Rito, one of a race of bird people from the game, and he was...hard to dislike, at the very least. He was a minstrel who sang songs of legends, accompanying himself on an accordion. He was always polite and kind to the player - and it helped that he was something of a looker, with a certain buffness to him. Probably something to do with needing the upper body strength to fly.
The unassuming bird man had made enough of an impression on Loez that he'd wanted to put the time and effort into a cosplay. He wasn't much of a sewer or anything like that, so he'd had to commission someone to design the clothing for him. It had taken a couple of months for the pieces to be finished, but when they came in the mail, they looked great. He'd tried them on more than a few times - sometimes he felt the urge to just wear them all day, but he wanted to save that kind of thing for the next convention.
The one regret - it didn't look quite as authentic as he'd like. Not the clothes of course, they looked excellent, the leather vest, the white scarf and red sash, the baggy white pants. It would be hard for anyone to deny that they looked as authentic as possible, but...
Well, Loez was a human. Kass was an anthro bird. And Loez had a pretty different body type - more puff than buff, than anything else. Maybe he could've commissioned something like a Kass fursuit, but...that would be even more expensive than what he'd already got. That level of authenticity would have to be something he'd have to leave in his dreams for now.
But there was still something he could do to make it look a little better, and that solution had come today in the form of another package on his doorstep ordered over the internet. The custom clothes had already burned a hole in his wallet, so he'd gone for a cheaper option with this prop, buying it premade off a cosplay site. He was surprised they even had it for sale, but he wasn't about to pass up the chance. And now here he was, unwrapping the package in his lounge to reveal...an accordion.
It looked fine enough as an accordion - well, Loez didn't really know how to play accordion or what a good one looked like, but it seemed fine enough. The body - the wooden handles - of the accordion was painted brown with golden edges, while the bellows were two-tone - the top half was bright yellow while the bottom half was a more turquoise blue. Loez stroked his chin, feeling his fingers brush up against his brown goatee. It looked pretty much like Kass's accordion.
Loez set his hands on the body of the accordion, just to feel it out. He squeezed it a bit, and it gave off the familiar, somewhat wheezy noise, which he jumped at - he hadn't expected it to be a working accordion. Now he was worried. He wasn't any kind of accomplished accordionist - what if someone asked him to play when he was cosplaying?
Well, it was too late now. Besides, he hadn't seen any other kind of alternatives on the site. It'd have to do. Maybe he could try learning in the time he had, but first, he wanted to see how he looked in full. He picked up that accordion and rushed as quickly as he could upstairs to his room. Setting the accordion gently on the bed (it made another wheezy sound), he found the clothing he'd commissioned, and pulled it on. First, the leather vest, which felt a little tight around his midsection, then the baggy pants and belt (he'd have to find scrolls to attach to them later), the red and white scarf slung around his neck, and finally, the little head accessory - a bead with a couple of feathers attached.
With all that in place, Loez picked up the accordion again, carefully tying the belt straps around his hands so the accordion would remain in place, and walked in front of his mirror.
He looked...pretty okay. He was still a human guy with brown shoulder length hair rather than a handsome bird man with sky blue plumage, but...he was definitely recognisable as Kass. Maybe he should dye his hair or something before the next con...he tried to imagine himself with blue hair. Maybe not.
His fingers rested on the keys of the accordion. He pressed one down and squeezed the accordion, and it gave out a surprisingly tuneful note. He smiled. Maybe he could learn a couple of songs. It couldn't be that hard, could it? There was only six keys on this accordion. He pressed a couple more and pulled the accordion back again. It...seemed to be working.
It was slow at first. He sat down on the bed and tried a few notes. It wasn't too hard, but it seemed like if he played for too long he might get worn out - it required a lot more physical effort than most instruments. Maybe Kass didn't get all his upper body strength JUST from flying. Loez wasn't about to be far behind, though.
As he tested a few more times, getting more a than a couple of bum notes, his body was beginning to change. With each successful note, he lost a little bit of fat, the act of playing music seeming to burn away the bloat around his belly. The progress was slow, but Loez felt encouraged by each successful note he managed to hold. As he lost the fat on his legs and belly, it was converting into muscle. His chest was pushing out, his ribcage expanding with each squeeze of the bellows. He was beginning to gain the upper body strength he was looking for.
His chest was pushing out with muscle, and now it was riding across into his shoulders, as they bulked out, causing the scarf around his neck to shift a little. His arms were getting stronger, muscle beginning to pack on as he got better at playing - and he was quickly getting better. He was feeling out the notes. He had no idea what their technical names were, but it seemed like he was getting some kind of tune out of the squeezebox.
His triceps and biceps were bulking out now, and it was getting easier and easier to play the instrument, both in terms of the physical effort he was putting into playing it, and making something that sounded good. There was an itch that was going across his arms, but Loez was beginning to get caught up in the music. He'd never been much of an instrument player, but there was something about the situation...he was being fully absorbed into playing. He kept pressing the keys, seeming to just know what to hit next to make it sound good.
He closed his eyes, and as he did, feathers began to push out from his arms. Bright blue plumage, the colour of the sky on a summer day, was sweeping down his arms, but also across his shoulders, and under the vest and scarf he wore. Across his expanding chest and tightening torso, yellow feathers pushed out in a proud display.
His arms were getting bigger, and his hands bigger too, his palms broadening, his fingers becoming huge, more fitting to the large keys of the accordion, as feathers pushed out over his hands, which were becoming more like the wings of the Rito he admired so. The feathers differed in colour from the sky blue plumage - at first a darker blue at the start of his fingers, then yellow across his knuckles, like the feathers covering his chest, followed by pure white, and the tips finishing in black feathers.
From underneath the scarf, yellow feathers pushed out across the front of his thickening neck, tickling a little, while blue feathers rose up the back, connecting with his hair. He began to whistle along with the tune he was making, and feathers continued to spread, down his torso, along his legs, which were losing fat as well, converting to tight muscle instead.
His feet twitched somewhat painfully, as they began to morph, but Loez was too wrapped up in the power of the music to pay attention. His heels pushed back, extending backwards, as the skin began to turn black, becoming harder, rougher. His toes were pushing forward too, melding together, into two longer, thinner toes, and the fingernails grew outwards, becoming hardened black claws. He tapped his bird-like claws against the ground along with the accordion music, providing his own beat an addition to a counter-melody with his whistling.
Feathers were growing up the back of his head now, his hair becoming fluffier as the keratin in it changed, fluffing out into marvelous blue feathers adorning the top of his head. Now his face was changing, the bones shifting. His nose was pushing forward along with his jaw, his lips becoming harder - but the whistling was becoming easier. His face was changing from the soft skin from before, as his nose sunk into his protruding face, and he clacked the beak he was growing upon his face.
White feathers pushed out around his growing beak, and single colourful feathers framed his closed eyes - a darker blue, and a red lower down. Lower down, pushing over the waist of his baggy pants, a small feather covered tail grew in.
He could feel the music flowing through him, as he played the accordion like a master, a marked difference from the complete amateur he'd been only minutes earlier, but the whistling, the...tweeting, the trilling, it wasn't enough. He opened up his beak, and began singing in a deep, smooth voice.
"When the moon bleeds and the fiends are reborn
The monks will invite you as they have sworn
But first you must stand on the pedestal bare
With nothing between you and the night air"
The world around him was opening up, unseen to his closed eyes. The bed he sat on became harder underneath his butt, the soft mattress giving way to the hard surface of a grey rock. Grass grew out of the floor as the walls fell away like a cardboard setting on a TV show, revealing a magnificent wide open plain. He felt the soft wind ruffle his feathers, as he finished up his song, finishing with a little flourish of the accordion. He slowly opened his eyelids, revealing a pair of warm, amber eyes.
Kass smiled to himself. That had been a rather good recital, even if no-one had been around to hear it, but he didn't mind. He had always played music more for himself than anything else. He reached up a wing, and tightened the little bead on the left side of his head - it was sitting a little oddly in his feathers. Satisfied, he closed up the accordion, and tied it up to his belt. Spreading his wings, he took a few steps, before going into a run and leaping up, taking to the sky. The world was wide open, and where he went was his decision.
As long as he had his music, he was as free as a bird.
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