New Brush For The Kittens

I nipped down to the pet shop today to get cat litter - and picked up a wee brush for the kittens too. I have it on very good authority that kittens love being brushed and I suppose, every hair that gets gathered by the brush is one less to be coughed up in a fur ball later on, huh?

The kittens are now taking turns to be pampered but so far Jasper is the one loving the attention most. He sits on his bottom on the table and leans up my chest so his head is within a whisker's breadth of my face (yes he is that long) and purrs contentedly.

In other very exciting news, the pet shop had a chicken coop for sale! How exciting is that?!?! At a mere £200 too. I had a good walk round it taking mental note of all the roost bars, nest box on side, size of run, etc. It even had a lovely wee hidden compartment at the back to store extra food in. It will do some very happy chicken keeper as a lovely Christmas present no doubt . . . until they get a case of red mite and start pulling their hair out about how to get rid of the little sods from all that wood!

Kitten Update

Dude! Dude! We have a kitten update! I nearly forgot to tell you!

We put posters up in a couple of the shops, and yesterday I was going to walk round the closest developments putting mini posters through the letterboxes but the weather was so horrible it was as much as I could do to let the chickens out and feed them!

Last night Jessica and I were snuggling up for a cuddle when I received a phone call from a lady saying "I think I may have your kitten," would you believe it took a second or two for it to sink in what she was talking about!

The story goes like this. She was in the shop getting a few groceries, stood and looked at my poster for a minute and actually read all the way through it. She then went home, unpacked her groceries, turned round to let her LARGE GERMAN SHEPHERD out and in trots Flossie expecting her tea. The lady looked at her and recognised her immediately from my description. Flossie was put in a pet carrier and trundled round to the shop again to get my number.

We agreed to meet at the shop and Jessica re-dressed quick as you like and we must have been there in under 2 minutes. As soon as Jessica saw Flossie there were floods of tears and a vice like grip holding her to her chest. Then *I* started to have tears, then the woman found it hard to swallow, then Jessica totally broke down! We gave the woman a bottle of wine for being so clever as to actually read the poster and after more hugs we took Flossie home to her brothers who looked on totally disinterested and actually hissed at her later on.

Jessica demanded Flossie was to be allowed to sleep with her and after a good drink and bite to eat Flossie settled down on Jessica's bed and didn't stir all night.

The woman lives in a completely different development - not one I would have walked round, and although as the crow flies it is as close as the other developments, it isn't one we are ever near to. She must have walked quite far to get there.

Good job we had her seen to huh?

(Did you take in the part about her walking past the LARGE GERMAN SHEPHERD???? Good job he wasn't hungry! There would only have been a burp and a collar left after that meal!)

Where is Flossie?

At the same time as we found some photos of the kittens when they were only 4 weeks old around the time we first got them, we are worrying about Flossie. We haven't seen her since yesterday morning. She didn't come home last night. We haven't had more than ghost sightings of her today. The local kids came to tell us when they saw *her* in the street but it turned out to be Jacob. David came rushing in tonight to say there was a cat down the street and Jessica, Iain, and he went out looking, only to find that it was a neighbour's cat.

I have to say I wasn't all that worried, I am well aware that cats go off for days at a time, but even Jessica is thinking that she is *gone*. She is tormenting herself thinking about what may have happened to Flossie and it is starting to rub off on me too. 

What if . . . . *cuddles up to Jacob and Jasper and squeezes a little too tight*

Jasper - Kitten or Monkey?

This morning I had to stand under a neighbour's tree for 20 minutes quietly encouraging Jasper to COME THE HELL DOWN FROM THAT TREE with such niceties as IF YOU FALL AND BREAK YOUR LEG DON'T COME RUNNING TO ME . . . and IF YOU DIE I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!

The stupid cat had decided to climb the highest tree in the whole development and got himself well and truly stuck. I really think had I not been there to talk him down, he may have stayed there all day, crying pitifully. Perhaps remembering the time he fell from an open upstairs bathroom window with a FFFFUMMMMBT, landing on his feet right beside me, scaring the living daylights out of me. Oh, did I never tell you about that? Sorry. Been unable to talk about it without tears up to now!

Jasper is my main man though - he is the most loving of the kittens and well worth making me late for work to make sure he was ok. He sleeps on the kitchen table in the evenings while I work there and manages to have his body on the table but front paws and head on my chest - usually with a gap under him. And I defy you to find a purrier kitten. Yes, that is a word. I just made it up.

In other news, look at me - my first animated gif! And it worked too! Seriously - how clever am I????

Let’s have an Apple Evening Shall We?

Three apple related stories in honour of the Apple Event that took place earlier this evening.

First off is the indignant Jasper after being rudely awakened by the Apple Chime when I had to restart the Mac with him lying on the table in front of me. I have witnessed this a couple of times now and generally the kittens do not like this noise! What kind of kittens are they? Spare a thought for the kittens - they are going in for their ops on Friday - they will be coming home without certain parts on Friday night. That'll learn them!

Next is the first use, this evening, of an Ikea apple corer. I bought it at the end of the apple season last year AFTER I had stood and cored all those apples we used for apple crumbles and schnapps. I'm sure it was ridiculously cheap but it will be worth its weight in gold. 2 seconds is all it took to core this home-grown apple! The other thing that was ridiculous was the way the children both pounced on bits of the apple - seriously, you would think they had never seen an apple before!

And last, but not least, imagine my horror when I saw 4 or 5 damaged apples on the small tree this evening when I went out to check on the chickens. You may remember the two trees are inside the chicken run, but as none of the chickens even showed the least bit of interest in the apples last year we really didn't think it was necessary to build the run around them. I stood and puzzled over this destruction for a good couple of minutes until David stuck his head out the door and said he had sat in the living room watching a couple of chickens up the tree, pecking away at the apples. They are about waist height (the apples, not the chickens), and with another wee jump the chickens could be up and over the fence and away in to the neighbour's garden!

How's that for a home grown Apple Event?