In honour of the sixth birthday of my little fuzzballs, I give you this video of them chasing a laser pointer. I accidentally filmed it in slow motion, which means that the times when they sit and stare at the red dot seem even more absurdly long than in real life, but the parts where they chase and jump are hilarious – I especially love the sound!
The kitties were spoiled today with new toys and some special treats – though I’m not sure any toy can be more appreciated than a box!
Three years ago today I adopted my little fuzzballs, Watson & Crick. When I first got them, they were very much people cats, but they’ve gotten even more cuddly and affectionate. Crick started out as a kitty who would like to be curled up next to me on the couch or in the bed, but now she’s a full on lap cat, who will sit on my lap when I watch TV and who more often than not curls up on my chest to go to sleep at night. Watson still likes to sit just out of arm’s reach and meow at you because you are not petting him when you sit on the couch, but now he’s willing to curl up next to me on the couch or the bed and on the weekend he even sat in my lap while I watched two full episode of The High Man in the Crooked Tower! I was in heaven!
In honour of their third adoptiversary, I bought the kitties a cat house that looks like a shark because that’s hilarious. Here’s a video of them checking it out when I first gave it to them:
I like that they politely took turns getting into it. Much unlike their cat tree situation, where Watson inevitably attacks Crick if she sits on any level of the tree, even though he only ever wants to sit on the very top.
So far, Crick seems to like the shark more than Watson, as she spent a fair bit of time hanging out in there:
Watson went back in again after that, but quickly got out once I started taking pictures:
Happy adoptiversary, my sweeties! You make my life better every day!
It’s my kitty cats’ 5th birthday today! Because I’m the worst cat mom in the world, I’m on the other side of the planet. Fortunately, they are cats and don’t know how to read a calendar, so I can spoil them when I get home and they won’t know the difference. Special thanks to their Aunty Heather, who is looking after them when I’m away, with help from Uncle Dwayne and from Aunty Ellen!
So now that spring has sprung in Vancouver and all of the various pathogens with which I’ve been infected appear to have left the building, I’ve gotten back into the swing of things running-wise. I’m really, really slow from having taken so much time off from running1, but I’m confident that if I keep getting out there, the speed will eventually return.
I met up with my BMO Marathon Relay teammates for brunch on Saturday to discuss logistics, and I’m really looking forward to that event, which a mere 20 days from now! Fortunately, I’m training for the Scotiabank Half Marathon and the 13 km I will need to run for my leg of the relay is in line with my training plan2.
And speaking of the Scotiabank Half Marathon, I’ve signed up to run as part of Team VOKRA, which is raising money for the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Organization (VOKRA), which I’m sure you will remember is where I got my kitties from. They do good work in rescuing kitties and finding them safe and loving homes, so I’m happy to help support their work. While VOKRA is run by volunteers, there are lots of costs that need to be covered when it comes to rescuing, caring for, and eventually placing homeless cats in their forever homes such as:
prenatal, natal, and bottle feeding program
trap/spay or neuter/return program
supplying all foster homes with food and supplies
medical emergencies/medications
The team has a goal of raising $10,000 through our Scotiabank Half Marathon fundraising, so please consider donating on my fundraising page:
Watson & Crick say “Please Sir or Madam, won’t you donate to help the kitties?”
Not to mention the [redacted number] lbs that I gained over the winter thanks to taking so much time off from running and also Drink-cember. [↩]
I’m scheduled to run 13 km the week before BMO, as it so happens. The weekend of BMO is supposed to be a “rest” week where I go back to 8 km, but I figure two 13 km long runs in a row will be fine. [↩]
So I won a free photo collage mug. And I’m sure you can figure out what kind of photos I put on it!
Sorry the photos of the mug suck – the mug is really shiny, so you can see the reflection of me taking the photo in the mug. I’m a crazy cat lady, not a photographer.
Two years ago today, I picked up two little kitties, then named Simon & Blue but whom I immediately re-branded as Watson & Crick, from the foster home in which they had been living for the past five months, and brought them home. They eagerly jumped into my cat carriers as if they were just delighted that I was to be their new cat mom, but on the long car ride there were some sad little kitty cries that made me think “Omg, I hope they are going to be happy in my home!” They were very curious when they got to my place, checking out the entire apartment and then settling in quite nicely1. And in the last two years, they’ve just gotten more and more comfy in our2 home, and gotten more and more affectionate.
They have each established their own little rituals and favourite places. Crick loves to nap on my kitchen chairs when the chairs are pushed under the table3 and at night when I got to bed she comes with me to do a little kneading and then curls up either on my right side all cuddled up with me or on the pillow next to me. Watson likes to get his evening exercise by bursting, out of nowhere into a run down the hall and parkours off the front door, lands, and then just walks away like nothing happened. He likes to sleep at the foot of the bed, and that is in keeping with his general philosophy of wanting to be near you, but not necessarily touching you. This philosophy is a bit at odds with his desire to be petted, and this contradiction manifests itself with his tendency to sit on the floor just out of arm’s reach when I’m sitting on the couch, but then meowing and meowing until I pet him. He also enjoys watching me get ready for work in the morning, during which time he also meows until he gets petted. Both of the cats coming running to greet me at the door when I come home from work and they run into the kitchen when they hear me making tea and give me puppy dog eyes, because they know that I’ll give them treats4. The most exciting thing for them, however, is when there is a pigeon – or pigeons – on the neighbours balcony.
Watching an exciting episode of Pigeon TV.
As I’ve mentioned before, Watson really like eating cucumber. After much trying5, I *finally* caught it on camera.
Also caught on camera was Crick opening a cupboard door:
In honour of today’s cativersary, I bought a giant cat tree, which the kitties absolutely love. In fact, as soon as I took the pieces out of the box to start assembling them, they climbed right into it!
I assembled it, which was reasonably easy despite requiring a bit of moving of cats off of the next piece that I wanted to add to the structure. And then once it was all done, the kitties were able enjoy climbing around on its various levels and playing with the attached fluffy toy.
In conclusion, my cats are the softest, sweetest, funniest, bestest cats in the whole universe and I made an excellent choice when I bought their lives.
I love you, my crazy little muffins!
Though Watson was a bit of scaredy cat at first, preferring to sit on the window ledge behind the couch, but that only lasted for that first day. [↩]
I say “our” because they are totally the bosses of me and this place is theirs! [↩]
She probably feels safer because Watson can’t attack her when she’s there. [↩]
Because usually when the cats are doing sometime adorable and I get my camera out to try to capture said adorableness, they immediately cease doing whatever the adorable thing was. [↩]
As you know, I’m a crazy cat lady. As you also know, I adopted Watson and Crick from the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA). They are a charitable organization that require donations to do their work of rescuing and caring for strays and surrendered cats and kittens, providing them with veterinarian care and shelter, and food and litter for the foster families who take care of them until they are adopted. They have two fundraising efforts going on that I thought I’d share with y’all.
First, you can buy the VOKRA 2016 calendar. And you might just recognize the picture of two adorable kitties in the January 11th square of the calendar1.
Second, you can actual get a donation to VOKRA for free by purchasing gift cards for places that you already shop. Basically, you buy a gift card through them and they mail you that gift card for the amount that you paid (e.g., you pay $100 and you get a $100 gift card). They get these cards at a discount (somewhere between 1 and 10% depending on the store) and that amount is what VOKRA gets. So it doesn’t cost you anything and they get money to do their work. Win-win! There’s a tonne of places you can get gift cards for: Safeway, Save-On Food, Thrifty’s, Shoppers Drug Mark, a bunch of gas stations, London Drugs, some pet stores, Chapter’s, Cineplex Odeon, a hole bunch of restaurants, and even some spas! Check out their website for the full list and how to order (You have to click on their order form to see the list).
Watson & Crick thank you for helping their kitty brothers and sisters!
I tried to get their photo on their birthday, September 24th, but someone had already bought that one, so I went with my birthday instead. [↩]
This blog posting in a couple of days late, as the kitties’ actual birthday was on Thursday. But I had an after work meeting on Thursday and by the time I got home I was too exhausted to do anything other than curl up with the kitties and watch some TV. I figured this was a good way to celebrate their birthday, since I don’t watch a tonne of TV, but they seem to quite enjoy it when I do, as it means I’m sitting on the coach for an extended period of time and so Crick can alternate between walking over me, kneading on me, and curling up on my lap and Watson can sit just out of arm’s length and meow at me that he wants me to pet him, which he alternates with sitting on the purple chair and watching the TV screen.
Also, I gave them their birthday presents:
I figured the tiger would be good for Watson, because he has stripes (and I sometimes call him “my little tiger”) and the lion would be good for Crick because she’s a solid colour (and I sometimes call her “my little lion”).
VOKRA, the non-profit organization from which I adopted my kitties, has put out a plea for help. Vancouver has been experiencing an unusually long, hot summer and they are having difficulty keeping their operations centre – where the most vulnerable kitties (sick kitties, new moms and their kittens, and kitties waiting for a foster home) are – cool enough to keep the kitties safe and healthy. Someone donated an industrial air conditioner to them, but they need to raise $10,000 to have it installed.
At the time of writing, they’ve raised just over 1/3 of the money they need. And right now, if you donate, a generous donor will match that donation, up to $5,000. If you are interested in donating, click here!
For the most part, my kitties are fairly non-destructive. About 99% of the time, they reserve their scratching for their scratching post and their chewing on things to their cats toys and the cardboard boxes that I put out for them to play with. They don’t chew on cords that are plugged into things and Watson’s has lost interest in his habit of pulling the decorative knobs out of my bed frame (and even that didn’t cause permanent damage, as I could just plug them back in again). The only things they’ve destroyed so far are Daniel’s iPhone cord and the cord of my headphones and, since then, I’ve been good about not leaving cords lying on counters to tempt them.
But the other day I discovered that apparently the lid of my running water bottle was delicious, because I found this when I woke up on the morning:
I’ve left my running water bottle on my kitchen counter countless times – as well as my hockey water bottle which has a very similar lid – so I’m not sure why, on this night, a kitty who shall remain nameless1 decided to chew it.
To add insult to injury, I had only recently bought this water bottle because the one I’d been using before, which had been Daniel’s but he’d given to me as I’d gotten him a new one as part of his Christmas present, had broken when it fell out of my water bottle belt, into which it apparently did not fit snugly enough. And I’d only gotten that one from Daniel because my previous one, which I’d had for the better part of a decade (!) had its lid destroyed when it fell off the shelf in the dishwasher and got chopped up by the spin-y part of the dishwasher2:
So now I have yet another new running water bottle – this one is actually a bit taller than the one I had3, but fits nicely in my water bottle belt. It has a clear plastic lid rather than a black one, but I still plan to be very careful not to leave it sitting on counter!
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