We have a small “Queensland room” – basically a room screened in with mosquito screen – at our new place.. The kitties have been allowed out there for the last couple of weeks and they have found it very exciting – so much so that they have to sleep for many hours afterwards to recover from the thrill of it all. We thought we would build them a special platform where they could survey their vast kingdom. :)
If you look carefully you can see a rainbow lorikeet is hanging out in the native tree just outside the screen.
The big kitty is a good jumper and she had no trouble getting up there.
It took the little kitty a while to work it out, but as soon as I went to take a photo she rushed to get down..
Snoskred Pets
parent
Free Range Chicken
As you continue up the river we call our comfort zone, you begin to see tall gum trees instead of mangroves. Occasionally, there is a house – well you would call them more of a run down shack, but people do live in them.
As we kayaked up the river recently, I said to the other half “Can you hear a chicken?” and he agreed that he could hear one. We thought it must have been in a chicken house near the run down shack, but we soon discovered this is a free range chicken.
Maybe it is a rooster, but I don’t know much about chickens really. It wasn’t a course available in school. The chicken certainly seemed to be enjoying the beach, scratching in the sand.
Just the other night..
I was looking for a snack and I ended up with a banana. It made me think of Pixie from Daisy The Curly Cat. I went to see if maybe my kitties would like them a banana, and it turns out that the Little Kitty did, and she ate all the stringy bits I had pulled off the banana..
Then just a few minutes ago I went into my feed reader only to see that Pixie has gone to the rainbow bridge. It is surprising to me how many tears I have just shed for a kitty I was never lucky enough to meet in person.
I will never be able to look at a banana without thinking of Pixie. I am thinking of you Daisy, and Daisy’s Mommy. I’m sorry. I have a sad, too – as you suggest Daisy I will go and hug my kitties now.
Get Creative..
You may recall the Kitty In Box post a few weeks ago. Some years ago we bought those kitties these little hut bed things. They have relentlessly ignored them. We’ve tried putting them in places the kitties like to sleep, we tried putting them on top of the cat towers, we’ve hid little snacks and favourite toys in them. None of these tricks have worked.
A couple of weeks ago, The Other Half had the bright idea of placing box lids inside of the hut beds.. These photos were taken just a few minutes ago.
Big Kitty in the bedroom hut.
Little Kitty in the hut on The Other Half’s desk.
This is the first time they have both been in the huts at the same time, but they’ve been sleeping in them for a few days now. I think something about the cardboard is soothing to the kitties, plus it warms up under them and they like that a lot!
I think that The Other Half shall be rewarded the gold medal for making kitties do what we want them to do with a bit of creative thinking.
Message Received, Content Noted #2
Ok, I will!
Kitty In Box..
Last week Matt Cutts posted about the Kitt Inbox, which is a very plush looking inbox for cats that you can attach to your desk. I sent the link to The Other Half, who thought it was a great idea. This week he discovered a version that cost us.. well.. nothing.. because it is the lid of a 5 ream box of paper. ;) Except it does take up a little desk space..
I don’t know why cats have an obsession with boxes – or even if all cats do, but ours certainly can’t resist a box. They have all manner of comfortable places to sleep yet they will choose a box over any of the comfortable places anytime, even if they don’t quite fit inside it.
And yes, I will post something non-kitty related soon – things are a tad hectic at the moment. I’ve done a couple of new websites for people this week – Artists Blog for Artoholic from the Aussie Bloggers Forum – Cindy made her own header and it is gorgeous. I like the theme with the white on the sides, too.
Kin’s Money for Kin who I knew previous to the Aussie Bloggers Forum and who recently became a moderator there. Kin had found the little piggy which inspired the text in the header – I am crazy about it. Whenever I create a new header for someone it is like a very intoxicating drug – I can’t get enough of looking at it for a little while. I love the texture of the gold text. I tried to make the gold a little darker but then it didn’t quite match the pig and it never looked quite as good as that shade of gold you see there now.
While working on Kin’s Money, I discovered just how lucky I was to find this Freedom Green theme right off the bat because I went looking for a different theme to use. We found one and we tried using it only to find halfway through that the middle sidebar was not widgetized. The same thing had happened to me with a theme that Artoholic Cindy wanted to use only that one was completely non-widgetized.
I’ve done countless websites with the Freedom Green theme now – below you will see links to a few of them – and it never gets old for me – but I think it always looks slightly different and new because I always customise it and change the colors. In this case I changed the text for Kin and I like the different text so I may experiment with a few different fonts here on my blog.
Gemisht (purple nav bar)
LighteningOnline (a gorgeously raspberry color)
The Nutcracker Ski Club (I reversed the nav bar on this one)
Miss Amelia Smith (orange nav bar)
Kin’s Home Of Slightly Cracked Dreams (lovely and orange all over!)
Birdwing Therapies (love the green and gold)
Cherry Blossom Adventures (pink! And then some! I love the pink fade along the white edges)
Aussie Bloggers Blog (I still adore the header I made for this, it never gets old)
I don’t think I missed anyone out who is using this theme but let me know if I did. ;) As you can see by looking at the sites above, the Freedom Green theme is highly customisable. And I know this theme like the back of my hand now – I will always recommend using it to people simply because I know it well enough to be able to trouble shoot. ;)
Important Kitty Update
One mere hour after the last photos were taken.. They are still sleeping, but..
Can you spot the difference?
What Are Those Kitties Up To Now?
a) Snow Skiing
b) Bowling
c) Sky Diving
d) Sleeping
And of course, the answer is.. D!!!
The Big Kitty managed quite a feat before curling up for a nap. This box lid was originally on a box. She managed to take it off the box herself, turn it upside down, and then thought it might be a good place to sleep.
The toy next to her is her much prized penguin, which she brings to us while meowing some kind of kitty Broadway theme every night at bedtime and when we both leave the house she carries it down the stairs and leaves it by the door for us. Only we don’t get the benefit of that Broadway Meow performance as we’re not here. I am quite sure the neighbours enjoy it, though. :)
No News To Type..
There’s a lot going on in my offline life at the moment but none of it is anything I can really talk about here. And that’s a shame in some ways but it is also a good thing in some ways because I am so tired of the topic it isn’t funny. So I could tell you about the kitties doing a power struggle over the best place to sleep in the house, or that the little kitty has a new bird friend who taunts her daily by flying right up to the windows of The Other Half’s room and catching little bugs but I really wanted to share photos and in the second case a video of the little kitty jumping to get the bird.
Or I could tell you how the Roy Orbison show we went to see last weekend didn’t have the same Roy Orbison as last time and therefore turned the experience into something cringeworthy instead of an amazing experience and in fact we did not stay to hear the rest of the songs. But that is kinda one of those you had to be there moments.
Or I could tell you how The Other Half decided he wanted to replace the stereo in the car. Sometimes it wouldn’t read cd’s and it was intermittent and very annoying, so he chose a new one and he wanted me to get involved in the decision making process and frankly, after having my beautiful car stereo stolen many years ago I really didn’t have the heart for it. And I was feeling a bit annoyed about the whole thing. And I really just wanted to keep the stereo we had. But then he installed it and he called me down there to look at it and I was all *sigh* but when I got down there and he showed me that you could change the colors of the display, I noticed the stereo was actually sparkly! And then I got on board. But I wanted to have photos for that too, and the car isn’t here.
So I’ll just say that it has started to get a little chilly here at night now, and I have washed my big comfortable rugs and I have one on my recliner which I can completely snuggle under. And last night The Other Half went to Sydney for training, and I stayed up a little late watching tv, and both the kitties found a spot on top of my rug that was far enough away from the other kitty that nobody got upset, and they were all warm and furry, and I managed to move around and stay comfortable without disturbing either of them. It was lovely. Happy moments!
Butter Me Please!
There’s some old thing about putting butter or margarine on your cat when you move which will stop it from running away or getting lost. I don’t believe it is true myself, but we once did it with our Big Cat when she was very young. She now loves both butter and margarine. You can’t make a sandwich without the kitty hanging around under your feet looking all please butter me. In fact she can tell when you’ve taken out the margarine container and immediately runs to the kitchen from any spot in the house.
I spoke to our vet about it and he said that it isn’t a bad thing in moderation, especially as the big kitty seems to keep her weight regulated to the point of looking a bit scrawny. I try to fatten her up with bacon, ham, roast chicken skin and tuna but she never gets bigger than 5 kilos. However if I don’t feed her the bacon, ham, roast chicken skin and tuna, she can drop below 5kg fairly quickly and you start to feel her bones more than I like or feel comfortable with so I regularly keep up the treats.
Once she has eaten a treat, she then runs around the house all happy and kinda freaky like. She’s an odd creature in many ways and this is by no means the oddest of her behaviours.
