Moggie Madness

How often have you heard that phrase?? Kids say it all the time, particularly when they’re told they have to wait until dinner. And I know I’ve been guilty of it myself when I’m late for a meal. If a cat could say it, I think Rosie would be saying it most of the day. Of course, she is hardly starving and gets her 2 square meals a day. I’ve been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to reduce her intake and therefore her weight. At her last vet check, she weighed 6.5kg and I was instructed to increase her meat portion and cut down on her dry food.

I started to feed her the “light” version of Hill’s Science Diet - what I like to call food for the weight challenged feline - and boy does she know it. It’s lighter in colour, lighter on odour and presumably light on flavour as well. She eats it quite happily in the morning but god help me if there isn’t meat defrosted for her dinner. However, six months after starting this new feeding regime, she has lost no weight whatsoever. Her coat is beautiful and shiny, her eyes are bright and her teeth and gums look great….all in all, she looks very healthy and appears to be very content.

I just wished she was so full and content at 4am when I would rather be sleeping.

This past week, I decided to throw caution to the wind and get a proper pet bed for the cats to sleep in. I’ve been very reluctant to do this before, mainly because Mojo has a perfectly good pet igloo that he decided to no longer use about two years ago and I have never seen Rosie in it at all. But having seen Rosie snuggle into my mink blanket thrown on top of the blanket box, I thought perhaps at least one feline might appreciate my efforts.

Really nice plush pet beds are not exactly spare change, so I decided to be cautious and only get one to start with and see what happened. Well what do you know? Mojo decided that he liked it quite a lot and so then I was in a bit of a quandry. You see, it seems they developed a routine over a couple of days - Rosie got the bed between 10pm and 6am and then Mojo would take over around 8am and guard it until 10pm at night. But I kind of felt bad (no doubt due to my fellow pet lovers at AFW) that they did not have one each. I know - what was I thinking?

So now I have two, so they have one each. BUT, it seems that the sun-warmed front bedroom is still the place to be, despite having two beds available. After a little bit of fussing over Mojo, he finally relented to sharing the space, if not the bed itself. Pity it’s not a good quality photo because I only had my phone handy…..I’m pretty sure I may never see this again!

My mum recently returned from the UK after a month long trip there with a friend. Before she left, she asked what I would like as a souvenir. After a bit of Googling for a relatively easily obtainable gift, I showed her a photo of the Celtic Sun Circle pendant and said something like it would be nice. I had been lead to believe from various websites that they were quite common in Ireland - it is the trinity (land, sea and sky), woven into a circle which symbolises the sun and our journey through life.

Well they aren’t all that easy to find after all…..poor old mum traipsed up and down various streets of Dublin and Blarney trying to find the exact pendant I had showed her to no avail. There was one jewellery store that probably would have had it but unfortunately it was closed on the day she went looking. Nevertheless, she was determined not to go home empty handed and instead found me a Children of Lir pendant which was incredibly fitting. I only just finished rereading Daughter of the Forest not long ago, a story which is based on the Children of Lir fairytale.

The last couple of days have been delightfully wet in south-east Queensland. I noticed last night coming home from work that there has been so much water coming down that the reflective E-TOLL paint on the motorway has been partially washed away! Still I’m not complaining.

I’m pretty sure this little white kitty has had enough of the rain though. She has come to visit once before, only to be scared off by an extremely hostile Mojo who just happened to be in the cat enclosure at the time. I guess he figures that he already has to share it with one other cat - no way is he sharing with a third!

She’s very sweet, fairly timid and in reasonably good body condition but no collar to tell me her name or where she lives. It was raining really heavy here most of yesterday and I just felt sorry for her sitting out there in the cold. So I put out a small bowl of dry food and water in the patio as well as a clean warm blanket for her to sleep on while she was waiting out the rain to go home. The food was gone by the time I got back from work, so I’m only assuming she was hungry.

I know I will probably pay for my kindness in the long run because if she is a stray, she will probably return for more food and comfort. If she does, I might see if I can get close enough to check her ear for a desexing tattoo and feel for a microchip.

I went through the hassle of reorganising my study a few weeks ago so that I could look out the window while working at my desk. I figure I spend a lot of time in here, so I might as well have a view of something other than the wall. Shortly after doing it, I wondered why I had bothered since all I had a view of was a fairly weedy slope, the standard Brisbane suburban variety of birdlife chasing grubs and if I duck my head, I can only just see the newly planted garden bed. Nevertheless, I decided to leave it as it was because I really couldn’t be bothered shifting everything back.

Watching the willy wag tails chasing grubs out there this afternoon, I realised one of my juvenile grevilleas is out in bloom after our recent rain. It’s a Robyn Gordon variety and the only one of the three I’ve planted to flower as yet. Hopefully with a bit more rain, the Peaches and Cream varieties will bloom as well and I will have a slightly colourful view - providing I duck my head just that little bit.

I love the people at Nintendo, particularly whoever the spark of genius was that came up with the sensor technology in the Wii. We’ve had a Wii for a little while now and had fun playing with the Wii Sports pack - the boxing especially is really satisfying.

So when Nintendo released the Wii Balance Board as part of Wii Fit, it was a must have winter accessory for my technology wardrobe. I figured it didn’t cost that much - only a trifle more than what I would pay for a new release game, so why the hell not?? I wasn’t entirely convinced that it would deliver any form of fitness given that none of the exercises have any resistance attached to them. But with a daily 30 minutes of Wii Fit, I have actually lost some weight in the past 2 weeks.

Be warned though….the cats appear to come from miles when they hear the Wii turn on. They don’t want to do any exercises of course but I think it has something to do with the feline tendency to constantly be in the way of what you’re doing.

Today was the 15th annual RSPCA Million Paws Walk, so armed with two rather energetic mutts, I headed out to Cleveland to participate in the local event. There was an unprecedented turnout and I’m sure the RSPCA volunteers were overwhelmed by the support of the local community. I was absolutely astounded to see such a large number of dogs congregating in the park with their owners. There were dogs of all shapes, sizes and breeds and it was just so good to see them all out, having fun and socialising together.

As for us, we had a brilliant time. Both the dogs got a lovely hydrobath from Bill (Aussie Pooch Mobile Cleveland ph. 0411 776 663), some really nice treats and they have gone home thoroughly exhausted from all the excitement. It was a brilliant day and if you didn’t get a chance to participate this year, keep an eye out for dates for next year.

A mere fraction of the people and dogs walking in today’s walk - Cleveland’s shoreline has never been so busy!