Our kitten Floki just loves playing with his mouse. Actually, it isn’t even his mouse. Chris took a liking to it long ago and now Floki thinks it’s his. He plays with other toys to but this particular catnip mouse gets a lot of play time. It seems it is always in a different place when I see it.
Here’s a video from a few weeks ago of Floki playing with the mouse..
For #TBT I thought I would re-share a post from early 2014. Chris has become a bit fat lately so I don’t see him squeezing into small spaces like he used to.
Chris has always had a need to not only get inside drawers but get behind them. I cannot count how many times I had to remove a drawer because Chris has managed to get himself behind it. A recent post, Happiness is a Dresser Drawer, is a good example of this.
The problem is caused partly by my carelessness (because I am usually, but not always, the one who opens a drawer and forgets to close it) but Chris deserves some credit too for being so incredibly flexible. I don’t know how he squeezes himself through some of the spaces he gets into.
This morning I was in the kitchen using the juicer I got for Christmas. I opened the bottom drawer then walked away briefly. When I returned, I saw that Puck was very interested in the drawer. I knew this could only mean that Chris was behind it but…
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Holly, my sister-in-laws’s cat, is like a female version of Chris, except she has a couple more years experience being bad.
How would you caption this? When you’ve thought of something, check out my answer on my other blog, JustFurLaughs.com
Today is World Cat Day or International Cat Day. A day created to bring awareness to the special needs of cats, and some of them, I’m not mentioning Chris’s name. can be very needy.
When I made my first batch of raw cat food, I was afraid the cats wouldn’t like it, which is why I bought only a small amount of the premix from TCfeline. I needn’t have worried because they loved it. Granted, I started with only two ounces mixed with a 5.5 ounce can of cat food, but it was a better start than I expected.
I made a second batch last Sunday and decided to photograph the process because I forgot to do that last time. This time I decided to give them variety and used beef instead of chicken. The decision was also helped by the fact that I had a $5 off coupon for two pounds of beef at Whole Foods using their app.
I thought I would cut it into chunks instead of having it ground so I went home to do the work myself. Often, the way I envision things going are very different from the way things really go. This is one example.
Even though I am no chef, I am still embarrassed to say that I didn’t have a knife sharp enough to cut two pounds of beef. With much effort, I was able to cut this hunk of meat into slices but then gave up.
Instead, I pulled out my Ninja blender and stuck the pieces in there. I don’t think it was designed for grinding meat but it did a good job cutting it up and it worked quite fast too.
A meat grinder may have been more suited to the task but I noticed one advantage to this method. The Ninja didn’t do a very good job of cutting up the gristle which made it easy to pull those pieces out of the mixture.
I then put the beef into a large mixing bowl.
I added two egg yolks, but not the egg whites since they are bad for cats.
The instructions then call for a cup of water (I use spring water) and a quarter cup of the TCfeline premix, which I then added to the bowl.
All that was left was to mix it up.
Put it into containers.
And stick them in the freezer.
I still had some of the chicken mixture left and wanted to use that while I let the beef mix freeze for at least 24 hours (three days is ideal) as an added precaution against parasites.
I didn’t fill the containers as high this time. Part of the reason was to allow room for expansion when frozen. Another reason was because I wanted to increase the raw food to caned food ratio by using the entire container per meal instead of half the container. Before taking that step, I needed to make sure they liked the beef mixture, so I continued to give them only half.
The first feeding of the beef went well, at first, but when everyone was done eating there was still food left in the bowls. That told me they weren’t crazy about the beef but as the week progressed, the amount of food left over decreased. The last couple of days there have been no food left over so, it seems, they are happy with the beef now.
I have to make another batch today so I will probably go back to chicken, or maybe turkey, if they have it. I also have to buy more of the TCfeline premix. This time I will buy a bigger container. I will also have it ground at Whole Foods which will cut the prep time in half and make my work much easier. Who doesn’t like easier?
Wake me when it’s the weekend.
When I was looking for something to share for #TBT, I came across this post which brought back memories of Abbey, who is still very much missed.
I want to start by wishing everyone a happy and prosperous new year. I hope you all have a great 2014.
About five years ago Rose and I were at a benefit for a local shelter called The Suncoast Animal League (Where I later volunteered briefly). They had cat beds for sale and since it was for a good cause we bought one that looked a little like Abbey. She took to it right away and it became her bed, even though other cats would sometimes lie in it.
Abbey and Tigger in Abbey’s cat bed.
Abbey’s bed could sometimes get over crowed.
Tigger had his own bed too but he was not as attached to it as Abbey was.
After we lost Abbey, her bed remained behind.
Today we put away all our Christmas decorations. I don’t know how but it seemed like we had less room than we…
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I discovered a flaw in Frankie’s harness. I know it is a little big for him and not the most secure harness in the world, but it is very easy to put on him, and it has worked so far.
Walking a cat is not like walking a dog. You go where they want to go. On a recent walk, Frankie took me behind our house and across the next street. The roads get very hot in the summertime around here, and I saw that Frankie was being affected by it. He seemed to hurry across the street and stand in the grass where it was cooler. After inspecting the bushes for a while, we headed back to the street. A few seconds later, Frankie found refuge in the shadow of a car.
I normally try to keep him away from cars because I don’t want him under them, but in this case, I knew his feet were hot, so I thought I would give him a minute or two to cool down. Before I knew it, he was under the car, pulling at the leash. In an instant, I was holding a leash and an empty harness. It seems that the trick to escaping this harness is backing up.
I was not thinking like a news reporter, so I put my phone in my pocket and stopped taking pictures at that point. I tried to coax Frankie out from under the car, but he wasn’t having any of it. Eventually, I walked home and came back with a pool noodle that was in my shed. I thought I could intimidate him with the noodle, but that didn’t work. Instead, he growled, hissed, and attacked the noodle.
I gave up on the noodle ideas and brought it back to the house. I looked for something else that might work and found a water bottle. I thought a little water might encourage him to get out from under the car, but he wasn’t there when I returned.
I looked around for a minute, thinking he would be very difficult to find, but I found him hiding in the bushes next to the car. I picked him up and carried him home while he hissed at me all the way.
Floki can’t resist a moving tail and he seems to have found a target in Chris. Perhaps he knows Chris doesn’t like it.
