Wouldn’t it be awesome if cats had opposable thumbs? They could help you hang out the laundry.

But then they’d also be able to raid your pantry, your fridge, mess up the linen closet….okay, maybe it’s a good idea they don’t have them. Otherwise they might be worse than kids.

So we looked at a few other options but so far, we are yet to come across one which is worth it to avoid DIY activities reasonably competitive and will give the cats the amount of space we would like them to have. We’ve investigated using aviaries, DIY kits and netting but none of them seem to fit the bill. So it looks like it will be the DIY route if we are going to do it at all. It should be easy enough to do but fairly labour intensive. By my best calculation, it’ll be a good weekend’s worth of work. And that’s assuming we have the faintest idea of what we are doing once it comes to doing it.

I’ve put in a very dodgy concept drawing below. The idea is to put in a cat flap in our dining room window, use some of the existing tunnels from the old cat park to create a walk way into a bigger timber frame enclosure which will be about 4m long x 5m wide x 2m high. Whack in a couple of timber ramps around the edge, some hammocks, encase the whole thing in chicken wire and voila, DIY cat park. There’s even enough room in there to put a small garden setting in there and perhaps a few plants. The only thing I haven’t quite figured out yet is how to protect their litter from rain. Maybe a small dog kennel?

It’s still just a concept but it’s a bit more of an idea of what we can do than we’ve had previously.

]]> http://moggie-madness.com/reclaiming-the-bathroom/feed/ 3 http://moggie-madness.com/wordless-wednesday-4/ http://moggie-madness.com/wordless-wednesday-4/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 19:29:47 +0000 Kay http://moggie-madness.com/?p=603

I’m in the midst of looking at different destinations for an overseas holiday in a few years time and I was surprised to find this story about a couple who travelled some 15 000km with their kitten. They are French, so the entire website is in French. My knowledge of the language from my high school years is now fairly residual….I know enough to be a bit dangerous with it. But from what I gather, kitty travelled with them from Miami US to some place way down the bottom of South America, Ushuaia.

I think this is one of my favourite photos that they have shared from their trip. Cuteness!! There are plenty more in the Portfolio section of their website Turn of the World.

]]> http://moggie-madness.com/have-kitty-will-travel/feed/ 0 http://moggie-madness.com/the-view-from-my-front-door/ http://moggie-madness.com/the-view-from-my-front-door/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:03:04 +0000 Kay http://moggie-madness.com/?p=590 It’s been a very uneventful few months around here, at least as far as the moggies are concerned. Plenty going on in our lives but they are just doing the usual – lounging round the house and waiting (somewhat impatiently) for us to decide what form their cat park is going to take. We still have components from the one at our old house (the new owners didn’t want it) but it was designed to fit that site. Where the new one will go is relatively flat and the modules we have don’t really lend themselves to this kind of terrain. I’m even going to and fro about whether we will go for a CatMax kind of enclosure or another CatNip inspired creation.

In the meantime, they are just chilling out inside. I snapped this photo of them from the front door as part of the My Place & Yours Theme for this week at Hello Owl. One cat on the kitchen counter waiting impatiently for dinner, the other curled up on the recliner and most likely reluctant to give it up. Now the cooler months are here, I imagine that it will be even harder to extricate Rosie from her cozy spot there. There’s no doubt about it – she is an expert lounger. She could definitely give Zoe a run for her money.

Mojo was out and about everywhere by the looks but Rosie was a bit more reluctant to venture outside into the screened enclosure. I have my theories on this. The fortnight we went away coincided with some pretty hot weather. Glenda is kind enough to air condition the indoors on those really hot days. Mojo loves the heat but Rosie, like me, struggles with it and prefers to stay in cooler temperatures. It really wouldn’t surprise me if she stayed inside purely to make the best of the cooler temperatures.

Thank you very much Glenda!

Thankfully, the time of the Christmas tree is nearly over

Mojo and Rosie would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas! If you have cats, I hope you have got plenty of tinsel on the tree for them to pull off and chew to bits. It may make a huge mess but at least it distracts them from the food cooking in the kitchen.

Playing with the latest additions to our aquarium.

We started off our tropical tank with a small amount of mollies, a yoyo loach and one very big cat fish. The mollies have since gone to the aquarium in the sky having lived their short life span. Unfortunately the catfish put an end to any plans to have a self-replenishing group of mollies as he’d just gobble up the young as soon as they were born. The yoyo loach seemed a little lonely, so he got some new friends to play with last year. They’ve all grown bar one which we think is just like a runt of a litter. While the others have quadrupled or more in size, he remains very small.

Still the tank looked a little empty, particularly with all the bottom feeders. So off to Pet City we go to get four rosie barbs to add to the tank. So far it’s all happy families and no losses. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

They previously spent four days at The Cats Retreat in North Maclean while we were moving out of our old house and they seemed to cope okay so we decided that another two weeks  wouldn’t hurt them in the slightest. If you have nervous cats or ones that aren’t used to being boarded while you are away, I really do recommend this place. Auntie G looks after her charges very well and she is able to pick their personalities very early on to cater for their individual whims. I was a little worried about how Rosie would do given she had a recurrence of her skin problem but it has healed up nicely. Mojo has put on a little weight while he was in which is fantastic as he usually goes off his feed when a big change is in the air. And Rosie managed to lose a little of her winter flab as well I think. Auntie G even caters for nervous owners – I could send the cats an email and even a few photos from our trip away and in return, I got an email about how they were finding their boarding experience and photos of them during their stay.

I’m sure that given a choice, the cats would rather stay home and not have us go anywhere. But as a home away from home, I think they’d both agree it is a wonderful place to stay.