Gonna Wash that 'Poo Right Out of My Hair

Please see the updated post by clicking on health at the bottom of this post, and finding the new article.

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There’s this line in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales about the Pardoner’s smooth hair that drips down in curls, and another about how the cook has a festering sore. Maybe I was smoking too many funny cigarettes in high school, because for many years I not only conflated the two characters, but I grossed out their appearances: I imagined there was a Chaucerian cook who was so disgusting that all the food he cooked was contaminated by his hair that was dripping with greasy, yellow oils and his sore that squirted puss. And sorry to say, this improperly combined, gross, imagined image is the only memory of the Canterbury Tales I took off with me, into later life.

It has come up because I’ve always had a friend or two who has decided to stop using shampoo, or to skip multiple days of shampooing. “Shampoo is just a capitalist consumerist conspiracy,” my friend Winona used to scoff during college. In Houston, my friend Chuck would say a little more humbly, “I find that if I don’t wash my hair, I don’t need pomades.”

For most of my life, I was terribly jealous of the likes of Winona and Chuck. Of people who could skip a day of washing their hair without looking like my nightmarish Chaucerian misread.

What I learned over the years, though, is that no matter what kind of shampoo I have used, throughout my life my hair has behaved more or less the same: it is thin; when shampooed daily, it is thin and brittle; when not shampooed, it looks like I put olive oil in my hair; also, it won’t grow past a certain length; it is flyaway and it never looks healthy. All these facts about my hair lead me to believe I was just another white girl with terrible, mousy, broken hair. Since I’ve read so much about the dangers of the toxins in shampoos, I was forced to buy super expensive shampoos (my favorite: Aubrey’s Organic Baby Shampoo).

And then, about a month ago, I read this article on “No-Pooing” – a name, I confess, I totally disdain. The writer I first read washed his hair with a baking soda solution, and conditioned it with Apple Cider Vinegar. Since I like mixing things together, and there is really nothing I can do to my hair to make it worse, I delved into this No-Pooniverse (can. not. resist. stupid. word. jokes. sorry. ch.).

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No-Poo Log, 2007:

#1: I washed my hair with 1 T. of baking soda dissolved into ¾ cup of water. As per the directions on the sites, I really massaged the solution into my scalp by first massaging around the crown, and then in the center of my head. I used no conditioner.
Result: Very clean, very manageable hair, slightly dry, though.

#2: I read that most people just mix baking soda into a hand paste before using. I tried this. And I also rinsed with 1 T. Apple Cider Vinegar and 1 Cup water.
Result: Hair was oilier than usual, but not gross with oil. It was sort of an interesting texture that held curl, and didn’t look brittle.

#3: I washed with the baking soda paste, again. I read that vinegar rinse should only be used on the ends of hair, and this time, didn’t wash my scalp area with it.
Result: A little less oily than before. I was not completely satisfied, though I already preferred this hair to shampooed hair, because my hair started feeling like, I don’t know, hair. I realized that my old hair felt more synthetic or something.

#4: Some people No-Poo by just skipping shampoo, but using conditioners.
Result: My hair was way too oily. The woman who suggested this was African American, though, and a lot of people on her site found it worked for them. Maybe it just doesn’t work on super fine hair.

#5: For about a week, I tried washing with varying amounts of the baking soda paste, and started skipping the vinegar rinse. I always needed 1 Tbs of Baking Soda: ½ I rubbed onto the top of my head, the other into the back.
Result: Varying degrees of hair feeling more oily than I had become accustomed to. Never hair I could go more than a day without washing, but hair that was much more manageable than it had ever been, previously.

#6: I washed with a lemon juice rinse (1 T Lemon Juice in 1 C water).
Result: Made my hair extra oily, again. But I was starting to worry because I felt like even when my hair felt more oily, it was also drying out the ends of my hair more.

#7: It occurred to me that my hair was the least greasy the day I mixed a T of Baking Soda into ¾ cup water. I had been assuming the paste was strongest in eliminating oil, but decided to test the assumption.
Result: Lo and behold: in the less concentrated version, my hair wasn’t oily at all. When I awoke the next day, even, it wasn’t oily. I didn’t have to wash my hair that day when I showered!

#8: I started using less and less Baking Soda in the ¾ cup of water.
Result: My hair needs about 2 t. full – 1 T. full dries it out.

#9: My hair was not oily everyday, but for the first time in my life, I worried it was overly dry. So I started using the vinegar rinse, and I added some rosemary essential oil – which strengthens and darkens hair.
Result: Voila! Hair not dry, not oily. But I can’t use this vinegar every day: more like every three days.

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There are a few really fabulous No-Poo sites out there. My favorites are BabySlime, and Motowngirl.   Pioneer Thinking offers various hair/skin recipes.  The No-Poo sites explain how there is a long process of figuring out what your hair needs: clearly, I’ve found this to be true. It has been enjoyable, though, experimenting. Now I keep a water-proof container filled with baking soda, a teaspoon, and a measuring cup in the shower.

BabySlime has a lot of recommendations for different rinses. I’m about to mix up a gigantic batch, so I won’t have to make a hair rinse every day. Even on days I don’t use vinegar, I’d like my hair to smell of something, so I’m experimenting w/different essential oils. Daily I’ll use that rinse, and some days I’ll add some vinegar or lemon juice.

And I love washing my hair. Because 2 t. of baking soda a day costs less than half a penny. Because when you actually massage your scalp with baking soda, or with rosemary oil in water, it tingles. Because even though I was totally screwed by shampoos for most of my life, at least I figured it out. Because my hair used to be this terrible, sad fate I would be sealed with forever, and now it is this fabulous, shiny, manageable cool-person hair.

Green Cat, Flee Fleas: Integrated Pest Management

Getting rid of fleas naturally involves a number of steps. You must treat the animal, it’s environment, and you must attack fleas in all their stages. One note: just as your feline friends have been telling you for years, they are extraordinarily sensitive creatures. You can make more repellents for dogs than for cats. As I will say throughout this article sort of obsessively (I like cats): don't put essential oils on them.

KEY: EO equal Essential Oil. ACV: apple cider vinegar. DE: Diatomaceous Earth.

A HEALTHY PET DOESN'T ATTRACT AS MANY FLEAS:

Bathing:
1) DOGS ONLY: Boil 2 cups of Rosemary Leaves in a quart of water for half an hour. Strain, reserving liquid. Add three more quarts of cool water, to make a gallon. Saturate the dog with this. Let the dog dry naturally.
2) DOGS ONLY: Wash dog with watered down dish detergent. In the final rinse, add a few drops of Tea Trea or Lavender EO.
3)DOGS AND CATS: Wash in mild detergent, not in flea shampoo, to kill fleas.

Combing: Check for fleas on a regular basis. They are black. Their eggs are white.

Diet: Just like a wolf picks off the sickly sheep in a herd, fleas pick on the sickly cats. Commercial cat foods don’t contain a strong balance of nutrients, and this weakens the animals’ immune systems. Feed your animal the best food you can afford to, to avoid fleas. Human grade food brands, like Old Mother Hubbard or Wellness are examples of these kinds of food. Some people even serve the animals food they cook themselves.

DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS FOR PET:

Garlic (FOR NO DOGS AND NO CATS): Some people suggest giving a clove of garlic to dogs daily will make fleas avoid them, which might be true, but many sites warn garlic can be toxic to dogs and cats: here, here, and here, for example.

Brewer's Yeast (DOGS AND CATS): Add a teaspoon a day to the animal’s food. If the animal develops a skin irritation, as some do, stop giving it the yeast.

Vitamin BI (DOGS AND CATS): Ask your vet how much.

Apple Cider Vinegar (DOGS AND CATS): Add a teaspoon to the animal’s water dish. The acidic smell grosses out fleas.

TOPICAL REPELLENTS: When making a topical repellents, remember to get behind the dog’s ears, around its head, at its rump, and in its armpits. Be careful of any sore spots, the dogs’ very sensitive nose and its eyes. Most of these can be used by humans, as well. BUT NOT CATS UNLESS IT SAYS SO. Also, products may also repel mosquitoes.

Citrus Repellent (DOGS and CATS):
Slice a lemon, pour three cups of boiling water over it, and let it sit overnight. Put the resulting mixture into a spray bottle, and spray it all over your DOG. Cover the lemon with boiling water and let it steep overnight. Next day you have a flea repellent that you can use in a spray bottle. Don’t saturate pet, just gently rub mixture into its fur.

Apple Cider Vinegar Repellent (DOGS and CATS): Spray a fifty-fifty water-vinegar solution on the dog or cat.

Lavender Repellent(DOGS ONLY): Add 10 dr Lavender EO and 5 dr. Cedarwood EO into one Tablespoon of Sweet Almond Oil. Twice a week, smear into the animal’s skin.

Flea Collar (DOGS ONLY): 1) Apply a few drops of Eucalyptus, Citronella, Geranium, Lavender, or Tea Tree EO to a bandana, rope, or collar on a weekly basis.

Another Herbal Repellent(DOGS ONLY):
2 drops of cedarwood, lemongrass, rose geranium EO, 1 teaspoon ACV, 1 teaspoon vodka, 1 cup of dried peppermint, eucalyptus, and/or bay leaf herbs, and 1 - 2 cups of water

Last Herbal Repellents (DOGS ONLY):
1) 2 and a half teaspoons of basil, bay leave, cedarwood, citronella, eucalyptus, juniper, lemon, lemongrass, myrrh, palmarosa, peppermint, pine, rose geranium, sage, sweet orange, tangerine, tea tree, EO – in any combination; 1 cup 190-proof grain alcohol (from the liquor store). Mix together in a jar, shake well. Test your skin to insure you aren’t allergic. Fine tune by adding any other scents, so you like the smell. Put it in a fine misting spray bottle, apply to clothes and skin.
2) Same as first recipe, but use distilled water instead of alcohol.
3) Same as first recipe, use 2 oz base oil (sweet almond, ie) instead of alcohol. Rub into dog’s fur.

Flea Powdered for the very Motivated (DOGS and CATS):
1 part food grade diatomaceous earth, 2 parts feverfew flowers, 2 parts mullein flowers, 2 parts yarrow flowers, leaves, and stems and 1 part sage or thyme. For the greatest potency, make only when needed. Grind the fresh ingredients in an electric coffee grinder or use a mortar and pestle. Sprinkle and brush into your pet's coat.

INDOOR ENVIRONMENT:
Floors(DOGS AND CATS):
1) Vacuum all the cracks in your home, especially around the animals’ beds.
2) Vacuum with a bunch of food grade (not swimming pool grade) Diatomaceous Earth in the vacuum bag…it spreads around nicely.
3) Sprinke salt, borax (NOT CATS), or Diatomaceous Earth on carpets; leave over night; vacuum. Remember to empty the vacuum bag!
4) Mop frequently in flea season.
5) Get rid of area rugs during season;
6) Steam clean carpets/furniture as steam kills the fleas.

Wash:
1) (DOGS AND CATS) Wash pet bedding regularly. Sprinkle rosemary or eucalyptus leaves in the bedding. No rosemary if the animal is pregnant.
2) (DOGS ONY) Add Eucalyptus EO to the final rinse.

Light Trick: (DOGS AND CATS)
1) Pour a small amount of Dawn dishwashing liquid or dog flea shampoo in a pie tin, add water to just below the rim and set it on the floor, near the pet’s bed, on a white (important that its white) towel or folded sheet. Use a desk lamp with a flexible neck and set it next to the tin and aim the light into the pan. Turn off the other lights in the room. For some reason this attracts fleas (and flies) and they jump into the liquid and drown. This is great when you can't spray or use chemicals in the house.
2) Buy a plug in light, with a sticky pad, that will also attract fleas.

Diatomaceous Earth: (DOGS AND CATS) Dry out the fleas larvae.
1) Sprinkle under furniture and into other nooks and crannies around your house will kill fleas and flea eggs by cutting into their waxy skin and dehydrating them. If you have carpet, rub it into the carpet with a broom, wait a couple days, then vacuum;
2) Put them in the vacuum cleaner’s bag and vacuum, spreading it around.
3) Powder the pet with it, but stop if your pet seems to react badly.

Boric acid or 20 Mule Team Borax: (DOGS ONLY) Also dries out larvae. Toxic to cats. Use as you would DE, but don’t rub on the pet.

Salt: Use as you would DE, but don’t rub it on the pet.

DE & Borax, 50/50 Mix: Sprinkle into carpets, rub with broom, vacuum later. Don’t let kids or pets crawl there until vacuumed, as the abrasive products may irritate them.

OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENT:

Diatomaceous Earth (DOGS and CATS): Cheap, inexpensive, made of ground up one-celled ocean organisms. Spread it on your yard, walkways, and garden beds. If it rains a lot, repeat every month. Less often if it isn’t a rainy climate. This works by drying up the larvae and fleas. Fleas can’t develop immunity. I know several Houstonians who swear by it. As noted above, you can also dust a room with it to eliminate a flea problem there. ***NOTE*** Theresa just wrote and said this kills beneficial bugs, as well. So target use of this project.

Nematodes (DOGS and CATS): These are microscopic worms that munch on flea larvae, and thus, they naturally control the flea population. Get them at the garden store, put them in moist, shady spots near your home. Don’t put them in the sun, they’ll die. They breed quickly, so you don’t need tons.
Garden: Grow Marygold or Fennel. I can’t think of why growing Eucalyptis or other smelly plants wouldn’t also help?
Yard:
1) Keep grass short and rake the leaves.
2) Grow Marygold or Fennel. (I can’t think of why you wouldn’t grow any of the plants with strong smells, that you’d put in the pesticides?) 3) Flood areas dogs or cats congregate. Fleas drown.

DISCLAIMER: I have researched all this on the internet and culled info from many sources. Before using any of these products – or any products labeled “natural” or otherwise – on your animal, you may want to do research on your own to ensure the product will be a good match for your animal. I am not a veterinarian or a pet expert. Just a nosy internet savvy, green mamma.

CAUTIONS FOR CATS: Most Essential Oils can kill cats. http://www.eartheasy.com/article_natural_flea_control.htm Do not put any on your cat, no matter how diluted…they build up over time in the cat’s system. AVOID THE FOLLOWING FOR CATS AND DOGS: Rosemary for pregnant cats or dogs. Garlic. Flea powders containing pyrethrins or other poisons. Pennyroyal, rue, wormwood. Tea tree has bad effects in some pets.

IF YOU’VE READ THIS FAR YOU DESERVE THE FOLLOWING BONUS RECIPE:
All Purpose Bug Spray for Plants
2 tablespoons vinegar, 2 tablespoons canola oil, 2 tablespoons Murphy's oils soap, 3 tablespoons baking soda Add all ingredients to 2 gallons of warm water; combine in a handheld sprayer and mist-spray your plants until they are dripping wet. Best done in the early evening to avoid burning leaves.

Green Cat Flea Bait? (#2 of 3)

Bugs are wet and sweaty Texas’ state birds. By bugs I count butterflies and dragon flies in fairness, but what I really mean are cockroaches, venomous things, mosquitoes and the pissy little insect in question: fleas. When summer hit Houston sometime that February after I first found percy, and he started losing his hair, and I kept getting minuscule “mosquito” bites, I never imagined “fleas” were the culprits. As a native of alpine, cold, and dry Utah, I really thought fleas only existed in nineteenth century novels.

As I’ve noted, Percy suffered immensely from my ignorance.

Percy’s pomades of choice from that day forward have been Advantage and/or Frontline flea killers. Some vet, many years ago, promised me that the active ingredient in these killers is a salt, and that the salt isn’t bad for my cat or me or my baby, and I was content to believe it because it worked. But then GreenDaddy just read that book about raising your children toxic free, and made me look up the ingredients in both flea killers -- Imadacloprid in one, Aryleterocycles in the other -- and I found that they were, indeed bad toxins. I also realized that over 90% of most of the rest of the ingredents aren't listed, and I know because I am a smart cookie who has read up on this sort of thing, that the inactive, unlisted ingredients are often much more toxic than the active ones.

I want to be a green parent. Fleas make the cat very sick. The two things that work to kill the fleas in Texas are toxic. Sigh.

Everybody on the internet knows all this. I found two particularly thorough articles from the Animal Protection of New Mexico website, one on why spot-on flea killers are not safe, the other on how to get rid of fleas naturally. I’ve also read a number of articles citing very sick pets, and sometimes sick humans, resulting from the flea killers.

So I read lots of articles about natural remedies. When I read stories of people who tried them, I don’t get lots of assurance they’re going to work. And the problem I have with them is that some “natural” ingredients aren’t safe for dogs and cats.

Two important examples of natural ingredients you SHOULD NOT USE: GARLIC causes liver failure in cats and dogs if they eat it regularly; thus, they die by spitting up blood when overexposed. ESSENCIAL OIL EXTRACTS: have killed many cats.

Even my diehard “natural” friends, in Texas, laugh at me when I tell them I need to stop using Frontline and Advantage. Percy has never had monthly doses of either…he’s like Izzy Mom and deodorant: he uses it about a third as often as the box says he should, and that works fine.

I am going to try to use other methods. In my next post I'll offer a number of recipes, treatments, etc. Still, I can’t help feeling skeptical. I admit this ahead of time. Deep inside my imperfect green brain I suspect that the only really effective treatments for fleas, outside of Advantage and Frontline, is moving to a northern clime.

Black Cat Green Cat #1: Fatty

When I met him in the fall of the Y2K, Percy Arnold was a sleek, black, good-looking feline sick of subsisting on birds and rats; I was a single, 20-something, depressive, aspiring writer prone to recklessness.  As I am fond of saying, he wanted a human more than I didn’t want a cat.  Throughout that fall and into the early winter Percy courted me fearlessly: yeowling pathetically at my window and feigning starvation, especially when I had guests;  darting into the little blue house, between my legs, whenever I brought in groceries; and curling up on my lap like a strong, street-smart safety blanket on the many evenings I sat on my porch, steeping in the sort of sorrows a woman of my nature was prone to.  

By January of 2001 I was purchasing cat food.  A month later, the litter box arrived, we had weathered varied trips to the Spay and Neuter Clinic, and it was all enough for me to believe our long-term relationship had been formalized.  A couple months after that, handsome Percy had transformed into a swollen, fat glob of lusterlessness.  Worse, he had a reverse Mohawk: a hairless line ran down from the nape of his neck to his spine.  The shock of his bad fur-do was augmented by scabby, swollen ears.  None of this had ever happened to any of my cats in Utah.

Many trips to veterinarians and late-night Google searches later, I learned he was allergic to fleas, mosquitoes, and cheap cat food.  Percy’s regimen has developed over time, since then.

I changed his cat food to Iams, which the dog groomers I used to work for had used. Percy, who had already gained a few pounds living with me, gained a few more. My fat glob of lusterlessness had turned into a veritable, furry pillow. His dull hair lost even more shine. I went to a vet just for cats.

The cat vet looked at me like I was a cat killer and told me I should be able to see Percy's ribs. I thought he might even call feline social services. But he gave me a chance, and switched Percy's food to something much more expensive. He lost a couple pounds on that food, but then I noticed it was made out of pork. By this time, GreenDaddy had come into the picture, and GreenDaddy has a real, almost obsessive fear of pork. Ask him about it sometime. I asked the vet for more help. What we decided has remained the cat's diet throughout the last few years.

Percy eats two small servings of human-grade, Wellness/Mother Hubbard brand cat food that has vegetables in it, as well as Salmon and Turkey (he is not a vegetarian, however he does not eat red meat or pork.)  The food is expensive, but in keeping with the vet’s orders, he eats a lot less of it than he did the other food.  The price about evens out.  More importantly, changing food dramatically reduced his sickliness within a couple of months.  

Now, Percy is as slender as kitten (still not the beanpole the vet would like, but seeing my cats ribs would freak me out). He is playful, again, and doesn't spend the days sleeping.  However, he now likes to sneak out of my house and scour the neighborhood for other cats’ food.  Last night, as I pulled into the driveway, I caught him meowing to be let into neighbor Zeke’s house, where I have been informed he has often finished off what the finicky kitten Lou Ann will not.  Still: that he’s spry enough to sneak around at all is a big improvement.



Next Installment: Fleas

Sunday Afternoon Conversation With My Husband

Dear Blogging Community,

I need your advice. It's true I'm into inheriting friends' and strangers' discarded items and thereby:

1. saving a buck
2. adding to our home's retrofabulous "design plan"
3. preserving the planet's rapidly dwindling resources
   
4. freeing up space in the landfills (which, I know, my Hummer-driving, consumer-crazy neighbors in the burbs will thank me for)

However. I am not a zealot. But I'm not sure GreenDaddy realizes it. Because about fifty seconds ago, he called me up from our friends' Rube and Angel's.

And this is what he said: Hi MaGreen. We're done. We've loaded all of our friends' stuff into the moving van.

I said, Good!

He said: Do you want a rug?

Me (thinking, how thoughtful it is that GreenDaddy remembers I was just saying how it would be easier on my knees if I could play with BabyG on a rug instead of the hardwood floors): Ooooh, a rug?!

GreenDaddy: Yeah. It has a sort of oriental pattern.

Me: Oooooh...

GreenDaddy: But it has diarrhea on it. (Being funny) Not Rube or Angel's. It's the puppy's.

Me: (Confused) Do YOU want the rug?

GreenDaddy: It's fresh diarrhea from last night.

Me: But you want it?

GreenDaddy: (Pauses) Well, it has dog hair all over it. It's covered in it.

Me (thinking that we're lucky he didn't become a salesman, but that he surely wouldn't call about a rug unless it was easily transformable and/or he really wanted it...): Ummm...Well, I guess I could rent a RugDoctor. We could clean it.

GreenDaddy: But it's wool. And it's not a really nice rug.

Me: But do you want it?

GreenDaddy: Well, it really stinks.

Me: Okay. Well, then. No, *I* don't want the rug.

GreenDaddy: Yeah. It's not a very nice rug. And it's got sort of an ugly pattern.

So my questions are: Just who does your partner think you are when he calls you up to ask if you want an ugly, stinky, puppy-diarrhea-stained wool rug? Is he the one who is addled? Is it a sign he needs a vacation? Or could it be that he thinks you'd be angry if you discovered a perfectly wretched rug had passed from out of your mutal grasp, on his watch? Or is there some other explanation I'm not thinking of?

Signed, MaGreen
Doubled over in laughter,
yet bemused