Breakfast for Cats!

Breakfast is being prepared on the counter!

Left to right: Wizard, Nick, Angus, Yukon, Owen and Penny. Everyone except Snafu, of course. He'll be up later for breakfast and special attention.

Thanks for stopping by!

~MamaLisa

Flashback Friday: Flying Kitties

Flashback 2007

This video was taken when
Yukon and Angus were juvvies 
and Owen and Snafu weren't born.




If you can't play the video, here is the link Flying Kitties.

It was way before Marshwood Cottage, 
when we are living in our (spacious) mobile home.

Thanks for stopping by!

~MamaLisa

The Cat Enclosure: Then and Now

When we lived at our other house, our cats were blessed to have an outdoor cat enclosure. DP is very good with handmade fences and fashioned a simple enclosure out of chicken wire and U-Posts. 

It was 7 foot tall and very flexible at the top, so that any cat who might have climbed up the chicken wire, soon found themselves falling back into the enclosure. No one ever escaped (except for that one time when BJ climbed over it, but then he got too fat and couldn't do it again, ha).

Part of our new house budget was going to include a professionally built cat enclosure by a company called Safe Kitty. We'd seen their vendor booth at cat shows in the past.

There was only one location outside our house that would work.

Candace and Mike, who own and operate Safe Kitty, are truly a hard working and lovely couple who own several special needs pets of their own. 

They made a special trip to our house to measure, measure and measure.  Then a couple of months later, they came back up with the pre-constructed ready made kit and spent the day with us assembling it.  

Although Candace and Mike delivered and set up our custom sized cat enclosure, they do ship their kits all over the US (check them out www.SafeKitty.com).

Fully complete!

My favorite part is being able to go inside with them.

A window with a ramp offers three modes of getting down.

 The bottom has open grass, as well as a gravel area to do business. Of course they don't restrict themselves to do business just on the gravel.

They have a great view of the open lawn to watch us, the dogs play,

or watch the birds at feeders surrounding them!

Winter was challenging...

But they still went outside on sunny days!

Thanks for stopping by!

~Lisa

Moving Cats to Marshwood Cottage

A year ago we bought this cute cottage. We call it Marshwood Cottage (we also call it tiny house on the swamp).

It has a big beautiful backyard with several garden beds, a workshop/shed, woods, even a small pond.

DP got to work right away building new fences and replacing existing ones. With three layers of fencing for dog walks, it’s a continuous process.

We repainted the interior (mostly).

We packed up the pets and stripped the “old trailah” bare, sold it and had it hauled away.  

Moving day was so crazy that I don’t have a picture of the eight cat crates packed tightly into the back of my Forester. 

Thank God we only moved a half hour away. 

Everycat say, “MEOW!”

 Everycat arrived safely and found the comfort and smell of a familiar bed (It was hard, but I thought it best not to start off with clean fresh sheets. I think it helped the transition a lot, along with not changing the kitty litter and having 4 diffusers of Feliway burning away).

Braver ones ventured out within hours of the movers leaving.

I was surprised Angus came out of the bedroom to explore a bit after only a day.

Everycat wore collars with new name tags engraved with our new information, and we kept them on for about two months…until we got our new cat enclosure!

But that’s a story for another day!

Thanks for stopping by!

~Lisa

Thankful to be Totally Grain Free

We are very excited to be totally grain free now. If we had lots of money or less cats, I'd love to feed raw, but grain free seems to be the most practical and most healthy we can do for our guys.


We only feed them a wet meal in the evening. This picture shows a breakfast meal of (Taste of the Wild) kibble which is at 4:30 or 5:00 AM depending on when I get up...which depends on how much four legged walking I can handle on top of me!


The wet cat food of choice that everyone seems to love is BFF or Best Feline Friends. They all love four or five of the flavors they offer. My biggest fear was that finicky kitties wouldn't eat a particular flavor and others would get extra because of it, defeating our attempt at controlled portions. 


Yukon and Owen have both lost ounces and everyone's coat has glossed up nicely. Another benefit is the older kitties, BJ, Wizard and Nick seem to have a lot more energy and everyone is more playful!


Thank goodness they've taken to BFF!  


P.S. If you're wondering where Snafu is in the picture...he is in his room at this hour of the morning (he is still free fed and has kibble available to him all the time), but gets the wet food meal with everyone in the evening.


~Lisa Co9T

A Diet

There has been a big change around here!

We used to free feed kibble and 

give canned wet food as a treat now and then.

But then it all changed.

[da, da, da, dummm]

Wizard is wondering what all the feeders are doing out here in the kitchen...empty!?

We took away all the feeders...

and ignored all the protests and unhappy stares....

And why did we do this...?

Some kitties didn't know when enough was enough!

Yukon gained 3 whole pounds in one year!

He weighed in a 17 pounds and even though we know a lot of kitties who weigh more than that, 

Yukon is a very compact guy and couldn't hold all that weight. Plus there was no sign of him stopping.

Plus, plus Owen was heading in the same direction.

So now we feed kibble two or three times a day and wet food once every day.

Here is everyone (and I mean all eight of them) 

waiting for me to come through the door with bowls of stinky goodness!

Nom, nom, nom, nom!

Of course we also feed them Taste of the Wild, Canyon River Feline as part of their daily kibble. Did you catch our review post of Taste of the Wild? They are offering a giveaway prize package and all you need to do is comment on the post and say you want a chance at the prize! The contest closes today at Midnight EST.

~Lisa Co9T

Wordless Wednesday - The Purchase

~Lisa Co9T

A Package!

Snafu's winning prize package arrived from Nip and Bones!

If you didn't know, I entered Snafu in Baby Patches' Terrible Twos Contest which celebrated her 2nd birthday. He won the honored title of The Best of The Worst.

We are so proud.

I was cleaning the house when Stanze sounded her introoder alarm!

She's very effective and no one comes too close.

I barely saw the FedEx truck pull away and walked out the door to find a box sitting on the driveway, well out of reach.

It was even addressed to Snafu!

Put a box in the middle of the floor and it acts like a cat magnet.

Snafu has his purple calming collar on.

Wizard has his lime green collar on.

The box and paper were a hit right away!

I don't have to tell Snafu the package is for him.

Aren't they all for Snafu?

To: The "Best of the Worst"

Look at all the cool stuff!!!

Yes, Momma DP is recording all of this...

Now we're getting everyone's attention.

Oooooo...we're saving this one for a rainy day.

Even Penny has a keen interest....from her chair.

These look really interesting! Good thing there's two.

How about this neat catfishing pole, boys?

Oops! I think they've spotted the feathered mousies.

Hello? Boys?

Is this what you want? I guess so!!!!

I caught four cats with the catfishing pole!

Ah ha! I've caught all eight cats!

Can you find them all?

To the right on the ottoman is Owen and Wizard. Below them on the floor is Nick, Snafu with the feather mousie and Penny in front. To the left is BJ behind the box with one laser eye, Yukon on the floor and Angus safely in the cat tree.

For some videos of play time, check out my YouTube Channel here.

 

Look at this bad boy and his stash!

Thank you Baby Patches from Snafu and all the gang at Cat of Nine Tales!

~Lisa Co9T