Protecting Your Cat from a Solar Eclipse

I don’t know about your part of the country, but in Atlanta everyone has eclipse fever and people (like me) have been racing all over the city in last minute bids to score a pair of highly sought after solar eclipse glasses, designed to allow the user to stare directly at the sun when the blessed event finally arrives. In my case I was lucky enough to get some from J.D. Taylor, one of the directors of the popular MTV series ‘Teen Wolf’ and a huge space exploration nerd.

This morning I realized that while we’ve been in the midst of a fervor to protect human eyeballs from the nuclear furnace raging at the center of our solar system, but what about Earth’s other precious treasures? When the total solar eclipse begins carving an enormous slice across highly populated areas of the United States how will we protect our nation’s feline population from having their tiny little eyeballs burned to a crisp??

I don’t know about your Atlanta-based cats, but mine will be entirely unprepared when our moon obscures the sun, and chances are high that they will stare directly at the curious event for the duration of the event since they have a lot of time on their hands, having given up on Days of Our Lives weeks ago. Of course I can’t really blame them since they’re just dumb animals – they’ve consistently scored well below average on their C.A.T. exams.

The problem for these cats is that while the moon will block out around 98% of the sun’s rays here in Atlanta, that remaining 2% is still enough to do some hinky things to their retinas (and I suppose yours, as well, but you got yourself some glasses, right?).

My cats were obviously going to need solar glasses.

Searching for “cat solar glasses” on Amazon.com I discovered that while there are a variety of awesome t-shirts featuring cats wearing solar eclipse shades I couldn’t find a single cat-enabled solar glasses for sale.

They must be all sold out!

Fortunately, as a designer, former prop guy, and the founder of Cardboard*Con, I was eminently positioned to handle situations like these so I whipped out my tape measure and began measuring one my cats.

You can do this as well.

You’ll need to gather a few key measurements:

  • the width of the head from ear to ear
  • the distance from the tip of the nose to the back of the ear
  • the distance from the cat to your medicine cabinet, because you’re going to need some hydrogen peroxide, some mecurichrome, and some good band-aids

Here are my basic plans for a pair of feline solar shades. You can see that I have designed KittyEarLoops™ to keep the shades on the cat’s head for the duration of the solar eclipse. Yes, I know that I am unlikely to protect my trademark on that name but I thought I’d try.

Note that you will undoubtedly need to adjust the design to fit your own cat’s dimensions. You can make those adjustments after you stop bleeding.

Go ahead and keep the supplies from the medicine cabinet for the remainder of this exercise.

Once you have drawn up solar shades for YOUR kitty’s head, go ahead and cut out those center sections using a craft knife.

Be sure to get an adult to supervise you while you do this, as they will undoubtedly want to post pictures of this entire event to their social media accounts.

Next, take a small bit of aluminum foil and trim out two (2) pieces the size of each “lense”, and glue them down using some Elmer’s white glue. Be sure to use Elmer’s as I cannot vouch for the flavor of generic brands.

Now take your new kitty solar shades and carefully loop them over each ear of your cat.

Your cat will be absolutely safe once their solar shades are in place, as the aluminum foil will block the sun’s damaging rays. In fact, the aluminum foil will block absolutely everything.

Here’s a diagram for proper fitting.

 

Remember where you put those supplies from your medicine cabinet, because you’re going to need them, buster.

Please share your cat’s solar eclipse experience using the hashtag #SolarCatShades

My cats can’t wait!

(Note: I absolutely forbid that you actually attempt anything mentioned in this article, you moron)

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