I don't know if I'm the only person in the Vanagon world with this problem,
but I'm betting not.
My cats--particularly my biggest, heaviest cat--LOVE to regard the world
from the Westy luggage rack, and that's fine. Many's the time I've seen a
furry streak come across my windshield as I accelerate down my street. The
trouble is how they get up there. They know they can jump to the wipers and
scramble up from there. Coming down, the wipers also make a convenient stop.

Needless to say, the Vanagon wipers were made to put up with a few raindrops
and a little windshield drag, not the inertia of an obese, mindless cat
going about its daily routine. My wipers all sag from time to time and my
windshields are commonly streaked with muddy foot-pad prints. I have
repaired a snapped wiper stud before, an act I would not care to repeat. The
weight and velocity of the cats spell trouble for the little teeth on the
conical stud that mounts the wiper arm base. This sort of thing can't go on
indefinitely; something has to give. Cat-Gard(tm) puts the give on the cats,
not the cars.

The Vanagon's unique shape contributes the the problem by being what would
be legally known as an Attractive Nuisance, like a swimming pool is to kids.
Other cars do not require cats to use the wipers to get to the car's roof.
The Vanagon cannot be scaled without the wipers, if you are a cat.

My solution is Cat-Gard(tm): An apron of blue tarp cut to cover from the
grille top to a few inches above the wipers and from A pillar to A pillar. I
taped a strong magnet to each corner so that the Cat-Gard(tm) can be snapped
into place easily.

The Cat-Gard(tm) depends on the Cat Law of Uncertainly, kind of like our
Heisenburg Principal of Uncertainty but having to to do with cats. In fact,
the two are very similar in that you can know either the velocity of a cat,
or the position of a cat, but not both. But I digress. Cats will not jump
onto something they are unsure of, and the section of blue tarp makes the
wipers invisible to cats--and they will not take the change of missing the
wipers.

So far, so good.

Jim