Cat Alarm

Now I realise that cats are naturally nocturnal animals, but being pounced on at 4am is something I'll never get used to! Oliver has settled into a respectable routine over the years. He likes to curl up at the end of the bed and snooze until the morn. He doesn't believe in sleep ins though, they're are no Saturdays in his book! When its 8am it's 'get up and feed me' time and thats it.

Poppy at 9 months has yet to fall into a routine that doesn't involve jumping on my head or scratching at my toes under the duvet at some un-Godly hour. She's also much more vocal than Oliver. When she gets thrown out of the bedroom (which she nearly always does!) she gives it about an hour to make sure I've fallen back in to my beauty sleep and then she starts Meowing and Meowing and Meowing!! Hopefully in another couple of months she'll grow out of this and then we can all sllep through the night again :)

I found this article that gives some tips on how to help get cats out of the middle of the night/early morning thing. I might try the hoover thing! Poppy hates the hoover..hehehe

Early AM Wakeups

Cats are notorious for waking their owners up at oh-dark-thirty. If you wish to stop this, there are several steps to take.
The cat may simply be hungry and demanding its food. By feeding it when it wakes you up at an ungodly hour, you are simply reinforcing its behavior. If this is why it's waking you up, you can handle this either by filling the bowl just before you go to sleep so it will not be empty in the morning, or by ignoring the cat's wakeups and feeding it at the exact same time convenient to you every morning. The cat will adjust fairly quickly to the second.
If it is trying to play, there are again several tactics you can try. If you make a practice of tiring it out with play just before bedtime, you can reduce its calls for play at dawn. What works in some cases is to hiss gently at the cat. You can also try shutting it out of the bedroom. If it pounds on the door, put it in a bathroom until you wake up.
In persistent cases, try the vacuum cleaner, eater of noisy kitties. Go to bed, leaving him out in the hall. Position the vacuum cleaner next to the door, inside it. Plug the vacuum in, and arrange things so you can switch the vacuum on from your bed (eg, wire a switch into an extension cord). Wait for the scratching and wailing at the door. Turn the vacuum cleaner on. If cat comes back, turn it on again. The cat will eventually decide to stop bothering you in the morning.

Poppy Goes to the Vet (again!)

Poppy

Well Poppy had her trip to the vet yesterday for her booster. She really knows by now that the cat carrier = VET! In the beginning when the carrier came out she happily ran in to it, thinking it was some new hiding place. Now you have to practically shove her in to it and when she arrives at the surgery she refuses to come out!

Is she sticking out her tongue at me!

As well as getting her jab, it was noted that she's putting on a bit of weight. She's always been very small and skinny but since her 'operation' she's filled out a bit which I think really suits her. However we'll have to start watching her figure from now on, as she is quite small she can't really afford to gain too much or she'll go from skinny cat to fat cat!


I bought one of those ribbon type toys today for the two of them to put them through their paces :) I'm hoping to get them running around chasing it, so far they're content to sit in the sun and watch me running around waving it like a looney! Cats have a great knack of making you feel ridiculous!!

Italian Loving Cat!

I'm not exactly sure why, maybe it goes back to his kittenhood (!) but Oliver seems to have a love of Italian food :) Now it's not that I feed him Italian food on a daily basis or anything like that, I am a responsible cat parent..oops, I meant to say cat owner ;p However whenever we are having anything remotely Italian for dinner, he turns in to such a beggar!

He's particular favourite is Pasta Frills & Chicken served with Olive & Tomatoe Sauce. He'll not only eat the chicken, but will also happily munch down some pasta if he gets it! This evening we had he's second favourite..pizza. Again he'll beg for bits of chicken, ham & cheese, all the better if there is a little tomatoe sauce on them!

Poppy on the other hand..not that interested in anything that doesn't come out of a tin with Whiskas written on it! She'll stretch to eating some tinned tuna, but chicken fillet etc, no thanks. Not that I'm complaining, one beggar is plenty...hehehe!!

Cool Clock

Under Construction

I'm going to be messing around with the page layout, template etc today. So apologise for any weird things that happen to the blog while I'm working on it :)

Oliver & Poppy's first taste of Catnip!

Spot the difference! Oliver with his Precious - Super Catnip Ball!

I've been meaning to try out Catnip on the two fur babies for a while. Today when I was in the pet shop picking up some fish food for our goldfish Mr. Jaws I spotted the ideal thing. The Super Catnip Ball! It's basically a little wooden ball, hollow, with a removable top. You open it up, pop in the catnip and watch the effect on your moggies! Oliver and Poppy LOVE it! Check out the video below of them enjoying it :) I think they are hooked!

Excerpts from "A CAT'S GUIDE TO HUMAN BEINGS"

1. Introduction: Why Do We Need Humans?

So you've decided to get yourself a human being. In doing so, you've joined the millions of other cats who have acquired these strange and frustrating creatures. There will be any number of times, during the course of your association with humans, when you will wonder why you have bothered to grace them with your presence.What's so great about humans, anyway? Why not just hang around with other cats? Our greatest philosophers have struggled with this question for centuries, but the answer is actually rather simple: THEY HAVE OPPOSABLE THUMBS.This makes them the perfect tools for such tasks as opening doors, getting the lids off of cat food cans, changing television stations and other activities that we, despite our other obvious advantages, find difficult to do ourselves. True, chimps, orangutans and lemurs also have opposable thumbs, but they are nowhere as easy to train.

2. How And When to Get Your Human's Attention.

Humans often erroneously assume that there are other, more important activities than taking care of your immediate needs, such as conducting business, spending time with their families or even sleeping. Though this is dreadfully inconvenient, you can make this work to your advantage by pestering your human at the moment it is the busiest. It is usually so flustered that it will do whatever you want it to do, just to get you out of its hair. Not coincidentally, human teenagers follow this same practice. Here are some tried and true methods of getting your human to do what you want:Sitting on paper: An oldie but a goodie. If a human has paper in front of it, chances are good it's something they assume is more important than you. They will often offer you a snack to lure you away. Establish your supremacy over this wood pulp product at every opportunity. This practice also works well with computer keyboards, remote controls, car keys andsmall children.Waking your human at odd hours: A cat's "golden time" is between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning. If you paw at your human's sleeping face during this time, you have a better than even chance that it will get up and, in an incoherent haze, do exactly what you want. You may actually have to scratch deep sleepers to get their attention; remember to vary the scratch site to keep the human from getting suspicious.

3. Punishing Your Human Being
Sometimes, despite your best training efforts, your human will stubbornly resist bending to your whim. In these extremecircumstances, you may have to punish your human. Obvious punishments, such as scratching furniture or eating household plants, are likely to backfire: the unsophisticated humans are likely to misinterpret the activities and then try to discipline YOU. Instead, we offer these subtle but nonetheless effective alternatives:* Use the cat box during an important formal dinner.* Stare impassively at your human while it is attempting a romantic interlude.* Stand over an important piece of electronic equipment and feign a hairball attack.* After your human has watched a particularly disturbing horror film, stand by the hall closet and then slowly back away, hissing and yowling.* While your human is sleeping, lie on its face.

4. Rewarding Your Human:Should Your Gift Still Be Alive? The cat world is divided over the etiquette of presenting humans with the thoughtful gift of a recently disemboweled animal. Some believe that humans prefer these gifts already dead, while others maintain that humans enjoy a slowly expiring cricket or rodent just as much as we do, given their jumpy and playful movements in picking the creatures up after they've been presented. After much consideration of the human psyche, we recommend the following: Cold blooded animals (large insects, frogs, lizards, garden snakes and the occasional earthworm) should be presented dead, while warm blooded animals (birds,rodents, your neighbor's Pomeranian) are better still living. When you see the expression on your human's face, you'll know it's worth it.

5. How Long Should You Keep Your Human?You are only obligated to your human for one of your lives. The other eight are up to you. We recommend mixing and matching, though in the end, most humans (at least the ones that are worth living with) are pretty much the same. But what do you expect? They're humans, after all. Opposable thumbs will only take you so far.

Hehehe....I love it!