Lap dances, strippers and punch-ups - the Excellent Cats arrange a stag party

[TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne]

Well, the boys among them are making plans.

The lady cats are having a spa fortnight in Italy.

Bills for flights, accommodation, food, booze, medical insurance and legal fees (not to mention a fund for bribing officials at Ljubljana Prison) are allegedly being sent to an unmonitored email address.

Have you told the ginger one there’s a vacancy?

After a week off with a cold I’m back at the gym, easy session to ease back in. Kitty’s had breakfast & entertainment & will be back in bed by now.

I have only the 2, and they have their own bedroom with double bed. Personally I think you're being mean only giving them one bed, which they are expected to share with you and Mrs G.

I don’t think Kitty minds not having her own bedroom with double bed.

If she does, she’ll have to pay half on a bigger flat.

I sometimes wish the little furry sods would choose to sleep somewhere else (they do have plenty of comfortable options).
I suspect they choose our bed because it causes us maximum inconvenience 🤣

It was originally a guest bedroom, door firmly shut to stop cats going in. But when Tobias came home he needed his own room for a few weeks until they got acclimatised to each other, and then for a bit longer as a place he felt safe. And that was almost 2 years ago!

Plus it's easy to trap him in there to catch for visits to the V. E. T.

I'm afraid I'm terribly cruel and the door to our bedroom is firmly shut at night with Kettle on the other side.

He doesn't seem to mind too much though he lurks right outside in the morning waiting to trip you up for his breakfast.

We let him in a few times and he was very cute but he woke us up and I do value my sleep very highly.

All fosters who woke me up overnight were expected to sleep in the other room until they could demonstrate that they’d learned better. None of them seemed to mind.

When the then to be Mrs G first moved in with me (over 35 years ago) it was on the proviso that the cats would stay out of the bedroom at night.
That arrangement lasted two nights until Mrs G capitulated (not to me though, to the cats) 🤣.

@Grumpyoldpersonwithcats I definitely think you have space for one, maybe two more cats.

Thankfully only 4 of mine sleep on the bed at night, the other 3 tend to stay downstairs but even so I end up contorted into strange shapes to avoid disturbing the little buggers.

My cats have no interest in sleeping on our bed. They come up when we are going to bed to check we are settling down properly, and supervise tooth brushing, and then sit on the landing outside the room (with the door open) until they are sure we are down for the night and won’t disturb them. Then they go back downstairs and get on with important cat activities.

Sometimes Snowcat brings her toy mice up to the landing to make sure everyone gets a morning present when we get up - one outside the kids’ rooms and one by our bedroom.

Well, after saying only four sleep upstairs, Frankie has decided to venture upstairs, into my room, and onto my bed. I have left him sitting next to Ghostie. Hopefully she won't be mean to him.

Don't mind me.

I have a boring zoom meeting tomorrow. I’ve agreed with a colleague that we will each try to get our cats to make an appearance.

While our cats quite frequently appear in Teams meetings; Basil's high point was appearing in a project initiation document I produced with a role of 'general catting' and a job title of 'Chief Mouser'. After the document got signed off I pointed out that clearly nobody had read the document properly because if they had they would have spotted his inclusion in the RACI matrix...

(To clarify RACI = Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform. Roles on projects for anyone who doesn't work in IT)

Was he responsible or accountable for the catting?

And am I right in thinking that the responsible party has to do it and it's the accountable party's fault if it isn't done?

I think I marked him as Accountable, on the assumption that Karl or Lenny would actually do the deed . Ultimately however that would probably make me accountable as PM if both Karl and Lenny failed. 🤣

And yes @Esgaroth. That is the definition.

@Grumpyoldpersonwithcats did Basil at least put his face to the camera? Breadcat decided her rear end was the best view.

He usually jumps on my lap - so yes, face to camera.

Kitty’s very unlikely to join in. First she’s got to not be in bed, then she’s got to be awake, then she’s got to be sufficiently interested in whatever toy I’m waving without said toy being visible on camera.

I haven't bought any new toys for Boris and Matilda for ages, as they don't really play with them anymore and they have a basket of mostly manky looking toys that I'm planning to dispose of. I felt a bit guilty about binning the old ones so I ordered them a Kong Kickeroo thinking that Boris might enjoy playing with it. Neither of them have ever been interested in catnip and Matilda is'nt the most athletic cat so I wasn't expecting much interest.

Boris found it before I'd even taken it out of the box. I had to wrestle it off him to remove the packaging. He then spent 15 minutes happily rolling around on the floor with it and ignoring his dinner. Matilda then came downstairs and, much to my surprise, also spent quite a while playing with it. They obviously loved the catnip. I'm now wondering if they're using different catnip these days or if it's normal for middle aged cats to suddenly take a liking to it.

I'm going to spend a fortune on different toys and types of catnip now aren't I?

We got the biopsy results from Tobias's lymph nodes today and the results are - (drumroll) - inconclusive!

So I'm left with 4 options now:

1. Repeat the ultrasound and biopsy. The lab will repeat the testing on the new sample for free, but the sonographer is expensive plus a) we don't know if the insurance will pay for a repeat and b) likelihood of finding out any more is rather slim.
2. Send Tobias away to a specialist cat hospital for a colonoscopy and probably more tissue biopsies, with overnight stay & the attendant costs. a) We don't think there will be enough left in the insurance allowance this year to do this and b) he would be SOOOO stressed poor love.
3. Treat the symptoms of the enlarged and inflamed lower colon. This would mean steroids, which have a very detrimental effect on the immune system and is strongly contraindicated for cats with FIV so a non-starter
4. Do nothing. He's otherwise healthy, good coat, he's not lost any weight (despite him being on a diet!), he has plenty of energy & plays with Girlcat and toys, eats well, uses litter tray regularly for both uses despite the extreme squishiness of the poos. I would just have to put up with grungy litter trays.

So option 4 it is for now.

Allergic, I think I would go for option 4 too. More tests and sending him away may be more stress than it's worth.

Mine go through phases with toys @HumanToCatBeasties Molly's Mice always seem to please them. I also bought a King Catnip toy which they have all played with. I think some catnip toys are better/more potent than others. Kong are probably in the "better" category. I also bought King Catnip catnip and catnip spray so I can rejuvenate old toys hopefully.

It sounds like option 4 is the best for the moment, although the cat litter cleaning sounds unpleasant @Allergictoironing Sorry the results were inconclusive, that must be frustrating.

@RumNotRun I was just really surprised that they went from 0 interest in catnip when they were younger (and I tried them on many different catnip toys and even catnip by itself) to rolling around with their face in a toy. I'm pleased they were enjoying themselves though!

I'm sure I read somewhere that kittens & young cats don't react to catnip the same as fully adult cats do.

That's interesting. I'm not sure when the last time was that I bought them anything with catnip. They're nearly 11 now, but I regularly bought them new toys for quite a few years until they mostly lost interest and I'm sure some of them must have contained catnip. I feel a bit bad for them that I could have been making them happily stoned on catnip for the last few years, but I just assumed they were genetically immune to its effects.