Christmas with the Excellent Cats

[TheShellBeach]

......... Silent Night.........

Well, maybe not so silent when there's a cat about who wants to be fed.

Join us in the run up to Christmas 2023!

Neither did I! Obviously both adrenaline junkies. That’s a study tree, as well!

I missed the cat up the tree as well!

Neither did I!

I noticed!

And that's really strange, because all my family claim that I wouldn't notice a comet even if it landed next to me.

Me too but it definitely gives it that 'I become used in a commercial Christmas card if you offered me the right fee.'

They look lovely @candles22.

At least you won't have the disruption of going to a hotel, Shell. I am a bit disappointed we won't get any Adventures of Linney in a Hotel updates. Would we have had Linney trying to sneak in Picard to test out the hotel beds?

Re noticing things: someone came to view the flat I'm leaving, and I offered him a cup of tea in my recently acquired Where's Wally Christmas mug (found in a charity shop) Despite much scrutiny, I had failed to find Wally.

Three seconds is all it took him! Three bloomin seconds!

I have learnt a new word this evening - sploot, as demonstrated in the picture below.

I live in a place in Cardiff called Splott, I wonder if I can get the name changed to Sploot?

That's not one of my cats, but just a random internet cat demonstrating splooting. Here's another one who is giving off "paint me like one of your French girls" vibes

There was a “paint me like one of your French girls” photo contst on The Cat Site recently!

Oh gosh, the cutest thing that ever has and ever will happen has happened. I was a bit upset and accidentally made a noise that sounded like a kitten. velvet who we suspect was a horridly young mother heard and started chirping back. She’s now perched on the bed next to my feet after coming in to check on me. Can’t explain how much this touches my heart. It isn’t big enough for this amazing lovely cat.

Darling, darling Velvet! ❤️❤️❤️

She is a lovely little thing. It’s funny because she’s not super cuddly, she’d panic if I picked her up for a cuddle, but I basically have to touch her or occasionally just be nearby where she’s somewhere safer and she’ll be purring like a lawnmower.
After calming me she’s out on evening patrols (I know you’re on a different time zone but it’s 3am ish here catsmere). I’m not entirely sure what her end game plan is for the patrols because she is tiny and non-aggressive compared to all the other cats in the neighbourhood. You all probably know the aggressive territorial yelling that cats do when they’re going to fight and the other day I genuinely thought “oh no, poor velvet forgot how to get in so she’s stuck outside” when she was actually trying to be in a fight incredibly ineffectively!
Love from me and Velvet to all excellent cats and their lovely families! I’m staying up until she gets back but sleep well all fellow GMT dwellers. We will eventually trust V but she is very young and on the extreme end of stupid, bless her lovely heart.

BTW Catsmere Velvet and I really appreciate your love for her. All the cats on here are special but they’re all the most special to those who love them best and it’s always amazing to find someone who also appreciates your little furball. I think if I’m right you and your sidekicks live easily half a world away but in a side universe we might live next door and Velvet is best friends with you!

OMG she’s just done it again. I thought she was out but she’s arrived back on the end of the bed when she heard I was sad. Every

…one here has an excellent cat but not everyone has the marvel who is Velvet 🥰

Oh Cecile, Velvet has clearly learned to teleport when she knows you need her! She may be a little goose but she's also a magic wonder cat.

I've had the same thought about Daisy probably being a mother. She was three years old and unspayed when she was taken to the pound (ie brought in from the street). She wasn't a feral, she'd obviously had a home and some level of socialisation, because she's very people-friendly when she gets over her initial wariness. It's pretty obvious she was dumped, or the ferals who owned her didn't care that she'd been lost, because nobody came looking for her either at the pound or the RSPCA shelter. This was in a tiny country town, if they'd wanted to look for her those would have been the places to start.

It looks like we're 11 hours ahead of you here at present (we're on stupid stupid daylight saving). I'm home after a busy morning driving around and visiting Mum in hospital. The babies have forgiven me for going AWOL on payment of lunch, and have now gone to bed and are ignoring me.

(Update - Daisy is now on my lap, making biscuits and purring. 😸)

I typed out a whole reply and then guess who arrived and trampled on the phone, erasing it?

I was just saying poor Daisy but I’m glad she’s got a good home now. I can’t imagine abandoning that lovely purring creature - some people are in truly desperate circumstances and have to give up their beloved pets but some just seem to throw them away. The former category normally involves giving them to a cat shelter directly though and the latter just abandoning them. Absolutely no offence to your lovely cats but I can see even less sense in abandoning a breeding-age purebred Bengal with a lovely nature as Bengals can fetch really large sums of money on the open market even if they aren’t quite perfect (she is almost entirely from a breed spec perspective but you can always introduce a 100% perfect father to correct these “deficiencies” for cat-show worthy kittens).

But yes, Velvet is a weird mix of socialised and really not socialised. She sleeps at the foot of my bed and wouldn’t dream of sitting on my lap - I get really proud if she walks over it. She loves strokes and fussing and immediately purrs and rolls around on the floor, I mean just does a lot of sideways rolls for no apparent reason, but we don’t pick her up, she does this terrified mew and if it’s more than lifting her down from the table she starts struggling. I could go on and on but the weirdest one is that her meows aren’t really calibrated, or if they are it’s a very odd scale. She’s either trilling to me when she does her check-ins or doing what sounds like crying in the next room when she knows exactly where we are and doesn’t want anything. She also has a “mission complete, I am satisfied” mew on a descending scale when she’s checked in on me.

She most frequently exercises her remarkable powers of apparition in response to a sachet of food being opened up to three rooms away. It was nice to have her do it when I needed her as well :)

Love the putty video by the way :)

No offence taken, Cecile, it's absolutely true that someone abandoning a Bengal (or any valuable breed) makes zero sense.

The people being desperate didn't really apply in that small town three years ago. Daisy wasn't starved, though she was (believe it or not) slim. However, I'm very glad to have her, and those "owners" can go rot.

Phoebe spent some time on my lap this evening! I managed to take a panoramic photo, for once, to show them both.

I'm afraid that some unscrupulous pedigree breeders are only interested in female cats as long as they produce saleable kittens for them.
It's not unusual for 'retired' pedigree breeding queens to be 'disposed of', often with health issues. (Ask Toddler.) They have done their job for the terribly responsible and lovely owner of the business who now won't give two fucks about them.
Sadly with the increase in demand for moggy kittens over Covid, exactly the same has applied to mogs as well.

I'm going to lower the tone of the thread again.

These are all that are left. DS2 had his first one a few minutes ago. I was telling him about those little machines from the 1960s that you put an old penny into, to get your Bubbly.

DS2 said he could "taste the chemicals" and disappeared back to his bat cave.

Havelock’s learned to fart like a human. With sound.

Not just eye-bleeding toxic cat gas, NOISY eye-bleeding toxic cat gas.

He blew off loudly at the caretaker. Then a pigeon.

He’s so happy.

I've only ever heard a cat fart once. From a previous generation of our cats.

A small black kitten who farted while lying down. He then jumped up in the air and twisted round to peer at his own bum, looking completely baffled as if trying to work out what had just happened.

@Shell - do you remember Bazooka Joe bubble gum that had a cartoon inside each wrapped gum packet?

@Shell do you remember Bazooka Joe bubble gum that had a cartoon inside each wrapped gum packet?

Oh Lord yes, Grumpy.
I'm off to see if they're still available now.

Desperate Enterprises Bazooka Gang Tin Sign - Nostalgic Vintage Metal Wall Decor - Made in USA https://amzn.eu/d/5o9WVpd

You can get the bubble gum, (without the comic wrapped round it) and it's really expensive.