I love it. We have a 25 pound cat who I'm sure would like nothing
better than to jump on those wipers- only, he's not allowed out of
the house. As to Schroedinger's Cat, wouldn't he be in the box/van?
What would happen if you painted the image of a wiper anywhere else
on the van?
On Aug 1, 2008, at 10:08 PM, Jim Felder wrote:

> 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

Oliver Mueller-Heubach
groundhogging@mac.com