I want a cat collar!!

I adore seeing cats wearing a nice collar with a bell on it. It's endearing and quite cute to hear that little tinkle as the furball trods along. And so I tried putting on collars for my furballs but I was met with utter dismay and they gave me a hard time to even fix the collars to their necks.

All that head-bobbing and paw-pushing efforts were meant to tell me something. After I managed to snap on the collar, they kept going round and round trying to get at the collars and just couldn't settle comfortably in them. I was worried the poor dears would feel dizzy just going in circles. After a few minutes of watching this, I decided to remove them. It's too torturing to watch that silent protest.

Whenever I see nice coloured collars, I am still tempted. It feels like such a pity that the little furballs don't like to accessorize. It's just so pretty on them... :(

The one where they hid and hissed

The day after their baths, the furballs were driven to the vet for their annual vaccination. There were meows of protests coming from Prue as she was carried into the voyager. On the way to the vet, Piper meowed all the way while the other two remained quiet and probably all cuddled up.

When we got there Piper was still meowing and the other two tried to squeeze as far back into the voyager as possible. It was quite a funny scenario. If they could make themselves smaller, I think they would, just for the sake of hiding themselves to be saved from the unpleasantness of being at the vet's. You can hardly see Phoebe as she tried to hide as much of herself as she possibly can.

The consultation with each of them started with the weighing and then taking of temperature. The furballs have put on weight since the last time they were there. Each of them weigh no less than 4kgs and according to the vet, they're slightly above average and if I keep feeding them accessive food, they will qualify as obese cats! I thought they were heavy but it never crossed my mind they were overweight. Oh well, no more suppers I guess.

After the vaccination, they haven't been eating. Lots of food left over on their dishes and they are quiet and sit with half closed eyes in their own corners. The vet says it's normal and could last for 2 days. So give them another day and they would have the energy to snub me for sending them to the vet.

The one with the baths

The furballs finally got their baths. The rainy weeks didn't give me much chance to soak them even though it's warm water running through their bodies. The last weekend however was pretty warm and nice so it made perfect time for a bath.

The baths were responded with long loud meows throughout the "ordeal", especially for Phoebe. The other two meowed at times but were easily soothed with kisses on the noses and by softly talking to them.

It took an hour to finish off the baths and a couple more to let them dry out. As usual the "escape from the hairdryer" routine worked perfectly for them as they struggled and wiggled until they could feel the loosening of the grip and dashed off somewhere to hide.

For dinner that night they had steamed chicken. Needless to say, all that "ordeal" was long forgotten and we were good again. :)

The freshly steamed chicken fillets.

Pet Vaccination Month

Read in this week's papers that July is the month of Pet Vaccination and they're going at a subsidized rate at selected vets nationwide. Good thing the normal vet I go to is a participating vet. Looks like it's vaccination time this weekend! I've also gotten one just yesterday...not a pet vaccine, of course!

You can check out more by going to the SPCA website here: http://www.spca.org.my/

Cat @ McDonald's

During the weekend I stopped over at McDonald's after doing my cat-food shopping. After cooling off with cold Coke, I was on my way out when I saw a cat going after scraps that people must have threw at it.

So decided to give the poor kittie proper cat food, and there it went happily gobbling up. I hung around a little while to watch it eat and in the midst of eating, it meowed at us. I was wondering if that was a "thank you" meow. Could it be? Or was it a "go away and don't stare at me eat!"? :)

Before: Sniffing at the last of the scraps.

After: Yummy cat biscuits.

You know you're a cat freak when...

1. Anything you see that relates to cats make you want to buy it...even if it's just a CD.

2. You think drinking out of a mug with a cat motif makes the drink better.



3. You wonder what cat biscuits taste like (but never daring to try it).



4. There is a slot on the key-hanger for a "cat key".



5. You save the 7-Up bottle to make a drinking bottle for the cats.



6. You use keyboard & mouse wrist-rests like these:

7. Your work station looks like this:

8. You read these books:

This weekend: cat in a tub

It's about time the furballs get a wash. The last time they got one was when I sent them boarding while I was out of the country. That was about a month ago. Since it's gonna cost quite a bit, I shall DIY the baths this time and face up the sulking and hiding. Sigh.

The baths will take me at least half a day. Starting with the trimming of claws to safeguard unwanted deep cuts and scratches, followed by the actual washing to the short-lived hairdryer blowdrying, it'll take me about 3 to 4 hours to get back my dry and fluffy furballs. They hate the hairdryer so at any chance of an escape from my grasp, they run and hide under furniture. Giving up, I let them be and turn up the fan to at least help the blowing. It doesn't get any faster than that.

Wish me luck with the baths!

Here's that sulk coming up.

Weird tastebuds

Meals for my furballs are usually cat biscuits with a spoonful of canned wet food. Twice a day, they feast on these with some changes to the flavour of their canned food. I switch between kitten biscuits and adult biscuits too. On some days when I have the time, the lucky furballs are served steamed chicken fillets. I used to make them salmon too but for some reason they enjoy the chicken better.

Each of them has their own favourite kind of food. I discovered them not by feeding them different food but merely by them coming around and smelling my finger to see what I've been eating.

The youngest loves durian, believe it or not. The other two would scramble away at the smell of it. This one however, lingers and finishes a whole seed of durian. I've also got a cheese lover who eats everybody's share of cheese if served on their dish bowls. And for once, I think the rest are quite happy for someone take food off their dishes. And then there's the curry lover who would hold out her paws to hold on to my finger so that she could lick the curry sauce off my finger.

I don't encourage much of these savoury foods for them anyway. They are already dropping enough fur so the savouries shall be kept to a minimum. Speaking of fur, I also hand out treats to help with their furball problem. Then there's the supplement for good skin and hair control but they would never eat it. I stick it between their food and they just avoid that blob and eat everything else. Crushing it and sprinkling into their food is an option but I would hate for them to have food they don't enjoy (I think that supplement may have some bitter after-taste as with all pills).

So much for a healthy diet.

When they cuddle and snuggle

Nothing feels warmer than to see your furballs cuddled together in a corner and grooming each other. The paws tangled on each other, sometimes kneading each other like how they used to knead their mom as kittens, the sound of their purring, are never enough for me. If only I had a video camera and capture those moments. Photographs don't do these moments enough justice.

They have their fair share of cat fights and battles of hisses and teeth-bearing episodes too. Those are amusing to watch but I never get near. Let's face it, I don't have claws and teeth as sharp as theirs and therefore I am not a close match at all. So staying out of the way and see who emerges the winner is a better option.

One of the more amusing fights I've witnessed is of Phoebe using her "dirty" fighting style. She inches close to her "opponent" bit by bit, cautiously and all of a sudden sits on the opponent's head! Needless to say, she gets a lot of hisses and paw scramblings. If cats could smile, I swear that you would see her grinning.

Anyway, even after all those dirty tactics, hissing, chasing and paw-clobbering, I'm glad they could still find moments to hug each other and lick away the blues. As much as I would love to know how that feels like, I think my skin would give way after a few minutes of their tongues on me. So I stick to cuddling up to them (amidst questioning looks from them) and listen in on those purrs.

Cat-love or Cat-hate points?

Nothing beats an hour long of grooming session for the furballs. Nice back and tummy rubs for them. In return, they make purry music for me. Win-win situation, what's so bad about that? Not only do I score more "cat love" points for me, they also look so silky afterwards!

But if the grooming includes a shower, then it's a love-hate situation. Only thing to save the relationship is to do more combing time to make up for the "cat hate" points! If the extra time on combing still doesn't do it, a nice kittie treat should be given, followed on with lots of nice stroking on the cheeks and under the chin. That ought to do it. Ta-dah!! Beautiful cat and still OK on "cat love" points. :)

Musical Dish Bowl

When the breakfast/dinner dishes are handed out to my furballs, they fall into place at their own dish. I've never trained them to which dish they should go to but they somehow worked it out amongst themselves. But after about 3 minutes of eating from their own bowls, they do a version of musical chair, rotating to eat from each other's dish.

One of them purrs easily even when you don't touch her. When she's really hungry and sees breakfast/dinner coming, she's already purring. She continues to purr while eating too. Who says only some people can do more than 1 thing at a time?

The small contentment in life...the purring certainly can lull me to sleep! :)

What are they looking at?

I know cats are sensitive and can see the smallest and fastest flying insects. But sometimes, there really isn't any insect flying about and you still see the quick turn of the head, big attentive eyes, perky ears, all focused on something.

That disturbs me especially when I'm home alone and they go do that. Wonder if there's something else they're looking at? Sometimes more than just staring, they go running in the direction they were looking at. I take that as them acting up and just wanna play chase or get some exercise since I often say "look, your tummy is about to touch the ground when you're standing".

Guess I'll never know what all those are about. Shrug it off and turn back to my TV, whadaya think?

If cats can talk

If cats can talk, I bet the first thing they'll tell the human is "stop meowing at us, your meows don't mean a thing! We only meow because we can't form words".

I don't know how many people believe this but I'm confident to say most pet owners will share the believe that their pets can talk and understand what is being said to them. Otherwise how do you explain the rigorous training sessions of "Sit!", "Jump!", "Fetch!" and a whole string of other tricks?

You may think I'm crazy or simply trying too hard to understand my cats, but each time they meow I could almost hear a translation of those meows into words in my head. So am I just imagining it because I'm desperate to know what they're talking about? Perhaps.

Most times I talk to them out loud and they either just stare or meow back. I wonder if we're even on the same topic although I could go on and on imagining them responding to what I said. As crazy as that may sound to lots of people out there, it makes me happy. Whether it's illusional or not, hey at least I'm not reported to some mental institution!