The Rug: My Nemesis

Being an extrovert with sanguine tendencies, feelings of guilt seldom motivate me, at least not usually.  This is particularly true when it comes to cleaning.  Mark and I keep the apartment tolerably clean, but  we've discovered that we tend to let things slide unless we have people over.  A lot.  Interior motivation is apparently worthless; public shame, however, is enough to get me going.  That being said, I vacuum about once a week, and everytime, I am amazed at the copius amounts of fuzz our area rug is capable of producing.

Our apartment has concrete floors and to prevent cold feet, we bought this area rug from Crate and Barrel on clearance more than a year ago, and to this day, everytime I vaccuum it, I have to clean out the vacuum canister more than once because halfway through it starts to look like this:

Even the dust in the apartment has taken on a reddish hue from the carpet.

Mark thinks all the fuzz is from the rug hanging for so long as a sample. I, on the other hand, blame this guy, who happens to think one particular spot under the coffee table is meant to be a scratching post:

But really, could one cat be responsible for so much fuzz? What do you think?