Meeting Teddy

My parents came down and went out to lunch with Matt and me this weekend and afterwards we spent a bit of time back at our place. My mom's service dog Teddy was with her so we took the opportunity to introduce him to Mika and Mochi while our food digested enough to make room for dessert.

This is Teddy. He's a Labradoodle.

 Run away! Run away!

Just kidding. The girls were totally fine with him. If anything, they spent most of their time ignoring him, probably because they were so excited to be out of the house for a bit. Sniffing every inch of the yard is very important when you're a mostly indoor feline.

Of course, the animals were all smart and spent most of their outdoor time chilling in the shade, while the humans all sweated out in the sunshine talking, snapping pictures, and risking sunburns.

InstaCATs, Sp13 Edition

Haven't posted in awhile, so I compiled some Instagram shots of the girls to share. I took some real photos at the park the other day, but haven't had a chance to edit them.

If you're on Instagram and want to follow me, my username is wrenaria. There's lots more kitty goodness on there than what I shared in this post.

Feathery Goodness

I picked up a new toy for Mochi while at Petco today. She loves just about anything with feathers.

I think she likes it.

Where the Pets Go

It's been quite a long while since our last Petco blog post, so I brought along my camera and hoped no one would yell at me for taking pictures in the store (I don't think anyone even noticed - plus most of the regular employees know us now). Mika and Mochi enjoy Petco just as much now as when they were itty bitty.

The tower aisle is their favorite. It always ends up being the aisle we spend the most time in and we come back to it multiple times in one trip.

(Mika, dear, I don't think that feather is big enough to hide you.)

Mika really took to a sisal mouse that was supposed to be attached to one of the towers but wasn't. She flung it all around and then carried off. It was kind of ridiculously cute.

The toy aisle is another favorite. It generally involves a bit of clean up on our part. (Sorry, Petco!)

The trick is keeping them away from the catnip ones. (They actually already own one of those catnip bananas that Mochi is going, well, bananas over.

And of course, the birds are an excellent source of entertainment. Mika likes to chatter at them. It makes them a bit nervous, but seeing as they live in a tiny pet store cage, I imagine they could use a little excitement in their day.

Ultimately, we always end up back in the tower aisle. Mochi tends to wear out sooner than Mika and usually chooses a tower to lounge on before we head home.

Union Jack Cat

Over the holiday season I got around to a project I've been meaning to do for quite a long while: create a Union Jack pillow. I'm vaguely obsessed with the flag design (and all things British, to be honest) and it just so happens that my Tullsta chair was in need of a better lumbar pillow. I decided to go with nontraditional colors though - sorry about that Brits. <3

Mika insisted on being involved in the photoshoot, however, so it ended up more about her than the pillow. She knows the camera means focused attention, so she tends to turn on the charm, at least until she gets bored and decides to take a nap.

If she's not on my lap, she's likely napping in this chair.

Gaining New Heights

Mika and Mochi's first play tower (as seen here) was getting rather unstable and wobbly lately, so we'd been thinking about finding an alternative. Mochi loves to run straight up trees when we go outside, and we really wanted to get something that would let her do that inside the house unencumbered by landing shelves.

This is what we came up with:

Essentially we picked up some plywood, a 4x4 post, and a few brackets and screws. The top shelf and sisal rope was salvaged from their old tower. Here's a simple explanatory drawing for those who are interested:

With how heavy the 4x4 is, I wouldn't trust this thing to stand on it's own, but with the wall supporting it (it's screwed into studs), it's perfectly stable. We would have liked to use something lighter and rounder like a cardboard cement form, but this was the right size, inexpensive, and gets the job done. It is a bit difficult to get the sisal tight on it - my hands were hurting the next day or two afterward.

Mika took to it instantly. She's always the braver of the two. In fact, we had to lock the girls out of the living room while we assembled it because she kept flinging herself at it wanting to climb it. Please pardon the poor lighting in these pictures. It's a weirdly lit corner of our house.

Mochi came around fairly quickly with a bit of encouragement.

Now they practically fight for who gets to sit on top and they love running up and down when chasing each other. Their favorite dismount is an upside down tension method where they walk face downward with their paws on the tower and their backs pressed firmly against the wall. Sometimes Mochi climbs partway up just so she can stand upside down awhile.

Leaping from the top shelf onto the back of the couch is another popular dismount method.

Eventually we intend to add shelves to the walls so they have multiple places to sit without hindering their climbing space, but we haven't quite gotten to that yet.

The piles of pillows in the shots below are because Mochi is a klutz and we were vaguely concerned about her getting hurt if she fell while figuring out climbing/dismounting methods. We weren't wrong about her taking a few tumbles, so I'm glad I put them there.

They've gotten pretty pro at it now though.

Having a Ball

So I'm about a month late (oops) posting about the girls' Christmas present, but here it is now! We got them a Smartcat Peek-A-Prize and they took to it right away. They like games that make them think or take extra effort, so it seemed like the right kind of toy for them.

Can you tell they loved it?

Matt also got me a bokeh set and I had fun messing around with it while the tree was up. Will have to find more opportunities to use it.