Category Archives: Cats

Praise Be!

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Thank goodness: this year’s Christmas Number One is a product neither of Pop Idol nor Fame Academy:

Little known US singer Gary Jules has clinched the Christmas number one with his cover version of Tears For Fears’ 1982 hit Mad World. — http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3302887.stm

What’s even more refreshing is that it’s a "real" song (albeit a cover), rather than a cheesy "comedy" outing (think Mr. Blobby or Kim Wilde with Smith & Jones).

Rumours of the death of real music have been wildly exaggerated, it seems. Things go in cycles: rock is now "in"; dance music is on the wane. It’ll be back, though. The only constant is change.

Big Day

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Yesterday was a Big Day for Ella and Nina—they got to go outside without a leash for the first time, aided and abetted by the cat-flap (useless fact: it’s Katzenklappe in German) fitted by Kathy’s Dad, Clive (muchas gracias, Clive!).

What I want to do next is butter their paws, to test the theory that this will encourage them to always come home. This is alleged to be an Old Wives’ Tale, but a colleague of mine, who used to be a chemist, tells me that there is sound scientific basis for this practice. Apparently cats will lick the butter from their paws and associate the good feelings that they get with the location of those feelings, and therefore will always come back in order to feel good again.

Here, kitty kitty—come and get your butter fix…

Life Insurance

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As of last Friday (5th September), we have the following insurance products:

  • Car (approx 1/5th the value of the car)
  • Home (buildings & contents – 1/250th the value of the house)
  • Central heating
  • Dental, and now…
  • Pet Insurance!

And never has insurance been so timely. On Tuesday (9th September), Ella managed to bring down one of our KEF Cresta 1 speakers, recently placed atop Gale S50 stands, onto (we presume, as we didn’t see it happen) her front-left leg. After a day of limping and seemingly getting no better, we decided to take her to the vet.

The verdict: Ella had broken her toe. Total bill: £90. Excess on the insurance policy: £35. So, the new speaker stands, which had cost us just £9.99 (the rest was paid for with a gift voucher) have now effectively cost us £44.99.

Anyone know of a secure but non-permanent way of fixing speakers to speaker stands so that cats can’t knock them off?

UPDATE: Blu-tak is the answer.

Introducing Ella and Nina

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Ella and Nina - our two kittens.
We’d like you to meet our two newest friends: Ella and Nina. They’re 17 weeks old, quite small, and run around like the clappers! We got them from Bath Cats and Dogs Home on June 29th, and they’ve grown loads already. Ella, the tiger-striped one, is pretty chilled but Nina, the dark tabby one, has vicious claws. It probably doesn’t help that her right eye is cloudy, but we’re giving her eye drops to try and sort that out.


It’s taken a while, but last night I finally set up Gallery on our web space and uploaded the eight pictures that I’ve so far scanned.


View the rest of the pictures.