Tales and Tails and NMCs - the Excellent Cats March On

[TheShellBeach]

Join us as 2024 starts and our cats continue to run our lives for us.

This reminds me of velvet when she first arrived climbing to the top of a huge bookshelf and then needing to get down. Our house is in a constant state of semi-ready to move out so the nearest thing was a full-body mirror propped diagonally against a desk. She jumped onto the top edge of it and astonishingly carried it off!

Yes! Every time they jump/crash down I'm holding my breath as there is only a small area of worktop to "parkour" off onto the floor🙀

This especially applies if they are very clumsy and stupid. I’d be more fine if she’d demonstrated an ability to climb along a fence reliably but in her first days she couldn’t even climb along the balustrade reliably and I would be up and down the stairs, arms out to catch her while she wobbled along it.

Bit of news spotted today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68021178.
A good thing even though it scuppers my plans to post TC to a willing MN recipient 🤣

It does remind me though that my first cat moved in with me as the result of a burglary. My basement flat had been broken into by forcing a window (don't know why they bothered, I had sod all of any value to steal). Got back to discover the break-in, plus a (gorgeous) stray cat curled up on the sofa. After a while he became a permanent fixture.

So the burglar actually gave you something instead of taking away! That’s awesome

I suspect the cat may have been miaowing at the window, which encouraged the burglar in the first place 🤣

Oh Grumpy, how heart-warming on a freezing day.

Heres two studies of a tuna baguette, taken two seconds apart.

That would be the best Royal Mail delivery one could ever hope for, although I don't think I'd want to be the one to open the box. I can imagine TC would not be happy!

Pet Theft Taskforce - the next Ryan Reynolds movie. Please.

Status of Velvet currently: please see picture.

Status of Velvet every night apparently: on my mother’s bed.

I shouldn’t take it this hard but I can try to talk reason into myself every way I can and still end up wondering whether Velvet just likes my mother more and it’s because I’m a bad person and whether Velvet will stop liking me at all.

Your mum sent that to upset you. Velvet does all her special things with you 🩷

Ohhh sorry to be misleading - I took that photo of velvet while she was on my bed (the clue is generally the grey and black bedspread with the cat face on it and I’m basically bedbound) but my mother does share any and all photos she can of velvet with the family group and it’s not particularly to upset me but more to pull rank and because it “impresses” my sister who lives abroad.

Velvet’s general routine is extreme running around in the morning, napping with or next to me in the afternoon and evening and apparently sleeping with my mother at night. She stayed extra long tonight :)

But my mother did make quite a point of how the cat sleeps on HER bed and how much she loves HER bed and never misses an opportunity to show off about how much Velvet is getting to like her, how much she knows about Velvet and has started copying my ways of interacting with her like meowing together which she never did with the previous boy even though I did and often tells me off for encouraging Velvet to meow.

Your mother's doing one-upmanship and playing mind games, which seems to be her SOP. So Velvet sleeps on her bed sometimes - cats sleep in all sorts of places, they swap nests. I heard Phoebe snoring from the lounge last night because she'd decided to sleep in Mum's chair for a change. There is no reason to think Velvet doesn't love you or will stop doing so. Yes, if you have to go away for a while you may need to get reacquainted afterward. But that's normal, not a statement about you.

Some beautiful cats here.
These two are Suki and Sox. The are best friends and completely inseparable. Biscuit the rabbit is also in their gang.

Gorgeous babies! And look at the size of (?) Suki's feet ... is she a particular breed or a DLH?

Welcome to the trio of lovelies, especially Biscuit, our very first rabbit.

A bit random, but if you have an Alexa device, you can ask her to sing you a song about cats. She also does one about dogs which I think is more uplifting (it's to the tune of Colonel Boogey/Hitler has only got one ball).

Next to my store there is an farm/equestrian centre that has at least two farm cats. Stll haven't managed to get near them, but at least this morning this one seemed curious (at a distance).
Next NMC project 😁.

That is a very fine NMC 🐈‍⬛

omg, his little face... 😻

What age are Suki and Sox? Trying to work out if you have one large and one small cat, or a cat and a kitten?
And of course welcome also to Biscuit.

I love the way Suki and Sox's tails are crossed.

A big welcome to our first rabbit!

Since I've been accused of taking 'alarming' cat photos - I offer you Lenny sitting on top of a speaker this morning. 🤣