Portrait of a Cat

3yrold held the cat in a headlock while 7yrold drew the portrait.

He nailed the facial expression!

Pay It Forward

Do you volunteer?

Is there a cause you feel passionate about?

I am a cat person. There have been times where I cared for a lot of cats at once (let’s just say for about a decade I had over 20 at one time and leave it at that). I have always had an indoor scaredy cat – basically an indoor feral cat who hides and rarely comes out and barely tolerates me (and that is only because I can open the catfood tupperware container!) for as long as I have lived on my own. I know this kind of cat needs a safe environment and would not make it outside of my house. My current scaredy cat is an 18 pound black and yellow tortie who waddles away as fast as she can whenever she spots a human and she hides under the sofa all day.

Once a month my wonderful husband uses a day of his hard earned vacation to stay home and watch the kiddos so I can volunteer. I help out a group who does free spay neuter clinics for feral cats. Every two weeks they fix about 20 – 25 cats.

Feral cats might not be cuddly, they might hate you, but, you know what, that’s fine. We still trap them and fix them and tip their ears so everyone knows they have been fixed. While they are knocked out they get shots and medical attention. I work in recovery. So I keep an eye on them and monitor their waking up, give them fluids (yep, I poke them with a needle) and (what I think is a cool perk!) get to pet a wild animal as it sleeps.

We have saved cat lives.

Follow your passion. Volunteer even in a small way. And it will renew your spirit and make you happy.

 

Felted Cat Balls

ok- Bear with me here.This post will definitely add to my Crazy Cat Lady persona but is not as odd as the title sounds.. 

I use a Furminator comb on my pets. Kinda pricey (check ebay!) but it works great!. It actually combs out the fluffy underfur if you know what I mean. So I was thinking about how this fur mats into balls and thought I would try making one by hand.

I am not a felter at all so I was totally winging it based solely on a bit of a Martha show I remembered where she made felt mittens out of wool fluff.

  So I took all the fur and put a drop of liquid soap in it and a dribble of water and just rolled it in my hands- adding water as needed.

Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. . . . Before long, it was tightening up nicely and when it was a tight little ball I rinsed and blotted and squeezed and rolled it some more on a towel.

I was  thinking I did not want it smelling like my Bath & Body Lime Verbena hand soap so I rolled it on the cat as I was petting her – to make it smell more like her.

The cat went nuts with it! Prrt-ing and  meowing at it, batting at it and tossing it in the air – MUCH bigger reaction than with other toys.

I then made this one from another of my cats to take the pictures and, surprisingly, the fur felted differently. Not as tight and with some hair poking out a bit. Next time I will try to comb her belly more. But she loved her ball, too and it reminded me of how she plays with those tiny very expensive little fur mice I buy her once in a blue moon (she destroys or looses them within minutes!).

Then I thought I should see if I did it right and found out this is not a new idea. There are videos (although I prefer my ball shape to his cigar shape), other tutorials (I have no patience to dye them but cute idea) and sculptures (I’m not that talented).

So, it is not as weird as it sounds. Try it and drop me a line on how your cat likes it.

Starting Over, Bows and Killer Cats

Imagine my surprise when I went to get an account so I could comment on Billie's blog only to discover we had our own blog sitting unused for over 4 years!

So, revamping it to make it purty and posting stuff to share.

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The 18 month old's hair is long enough to make tiny pigtails (or chongos). Too cute! And so begins the foray into bows and clips.

I bought some snap clips from ebay and have been covering them in ribbon from my scrap booking stash. I used tacky glue (worked fine), sticky backed ribbon (Colorbook brand from Walmart, again, worked fine) and have ran ribbon (pre-cut to size) through my mini Xyron with permanent adhesive - this seems the cheapest and easiest to me but I wonder about the durability factor.

I also bought some single prong alligator clips from Sally's.

Now I am baking ribbon wound on a dowel to make korker ribbon to make korker bows. There are some gorgeous bows on Etsy and Ebay and I am wondering if I can make some that are at least ok to wear in public.

 

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So, our cat Chloe (pictured here in beads- artwork by 10 yr old) has turned into quite the critter catcher. Kinda surprising because she is petite and delicate - unlike her muscular brother- and the sweetest cat around (one of only a couple who tolerate the attention and affections of the kids!).

One night a couple weeks ago we were watching TV and notice her outside the livingroom window. She was on the windowsill outside with a "present" for us in her mouth meowing to come in and share. Uh, no thanks!

A few months ago she caught a Coral snake (red on yellow, kill the fellow-- and, sadly, we did) and now she seems to be working on helping my neighbor (who has 3 outdoor dogs, 1 indoor dog and a handful of cats) with a mouse/rat issue she is having.

So- today I learned a lesson: Do not open the backdoor and send the 11 yr old to put out the trash without first looking out the window and checking for "gifts" left by Chloe's right by the backdoor. Uhg!! We were both kinda freaked out by the headless corpse of a rather large mouse (what is the size qualification for "rat"?). I covered it with plastic bags and an overturned flowerpot saucer and called the hubby to notify him of his cleanup duty when he gets home.

Deanna