Category: Other Posts

What Cats Want

What Cats Want: An Illustrated Guide for Truly Understanding Your CatWhat Cats Want: An Illustrated Guide for Truly Understanding Your Cat
by Yuki Hattori
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781526623065
Publication Date: November 3, 2020
Pages: 160
Genre: Non-fiction, Reference
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

 

MT found this last year and bought it for our nieces who were adopting a couple of kittens.  He liked it so much he bought a copy for our library too.  It’s a very easy read, with small bits of information about every facet of raising happy cats.

I’d say the book is far more suited to those like my nieces, for whom having cats in the family is a wholly new experience.  Veteran cat-slaves will find a lot of what they already know here, although I really appreciated the charts showing the different meanings of cat expressions and tail positions.  The chart of differing meows was harder to interpret.  I’d also have liked the book to address more pragmatically the issue of different foods for different stages of life (we have two “senior” cats and one kitten, all of whom think they should be eating out of all the bowls – how to seperate diets?).

But for anyone I knew who was getting their first cat companion, or even their second or third, this is the book I’d give them as an excellent introduction.  Lots of information easily and attractively presented.

Today was a mighty big day …

After almost 6 months of being on the inside looking out, as Easter-cat and Carlito ‘took the air’ in our backyard garden, two important milestones for Pikachu arrived today: she’s grown big enough that we are (semi) confident there is no way she can find her way out of the garden, and it finally hit 20 degrees (I wasn’t supervising in cold weather).

So it was that on a spectacular blue-sky, pre-spring day, Pikachu got her first taste of the great outdoors:

Of course everything was new, exciting and demanded minute examinations.

Eventually, after a respectable first-foray, it was time to wallow in the freedom.

MT and I were both a little anxious about whether or not she’d completely blow us off – with her colouring a mere shadow renders her invisible – but she was as good as gold.  She mostly stayed within site, and frequently raced past our legs as if to say “here I am!”.  And when she wore herself out with exploring, she raced over, jumped into my lap, and started purring for Australia.

Rarely have I seen such unbridled kitten joy.  Now, how to explain the cold-front coming through tomorrow…

By request: Quilt pictures

In a previous post, Pikachu was posing her adorable self on one of the quilts my sister made me a few months ago, and Christine from All the Vintage Ladies commented on it, asking for pictures of my other quilt of the book covers, so here they are.  Since today is our first sunny day with hints of spring to come, I tried for better shots of all of them.

Front and back of book quilt.  This picture came out well enough that you can see the different book-related patterns she quilted into the covers.  The titles are stitched in, but some of them are filled with fabric paint because she felt they got lost against the fabrics.  This is a full-sized quilt, and perfect for curling up in on the couch or in bed.

(MT’s feet say “hi!”)

The quilt below is a queen-sized and it just lights up our bedroom, a room that suffers from a lack of abundant natural light.  I wanted a traditional patterned quilt in blues and greens and that’s exactly what I got, although she jazzed up the back a little bit, and it makes me love this quilt even more.

I’m not quite sure why, but WP darkens the photos – I just compared the image I uploaded from my desktop to this one and this one is darker and bluer, which pissed me off – thank you WP for giving me another reason to be irritated.

Here’s the back, which is NOT darker… UGH!, but anyway, the background is a faded map of the world, and she used a few leftover pieces for those hip and happening stripes, which gives it a mid-century modern vibe (I think).

And finally, with the scraps from both those quilts, lest the cats feel left out (they don’t because they think those two quilts above were really made for them), my sister, quilter extraordinaire, made this for the cats, which Pikachu has staked her claim to:

My sister has made these for quite a few cats of her acquaintance and usually puts catnip in them, but with border controls here re-defining paranoia, I told her not to risk it.  The cats don’t miss it and love it just as it is.

Bookish update

Well, this is a good sign: I woke up today wanting to write up a post on my blog.  Unfortunately, I don’t really have anything exciting to share, but it’s still a happy sign.

So, let’s see, what’s new?  Melbourne is in its 5th hard lockdown.  I’m calling it Melbourne 5: Lockdown Drift.  It should end tomorrow, while Sydney-siders, who, by-the-by are the reason Melbourne is in this lockdown (they let sick people travel into Victoria) haven’t been so lucky.  They’re into week 5 now I think, and their numbers keep going up instead of down.  Their idea of “stay at home” is open to personal interpretation, it seems.

None of that is really new though and god knows it’s boring.  In happier, more bookish news, I’m still re-read binging, and it’s made updating my archives here much more productive.  So has the barcode scanner I brought home from work to process new laptops with – how is it that scanning a barcode never gets old?

It was tax time here last month and for once we got a refund; that meant I finally got off my butt and upgraded to a new internet connection and home network. Even better, I used the remainder to go on my first book buying binge since November last year, purchasing 11 new titles.  None of them have arrived yet, but soon, I hope.

Our menagerie continues to entertain us.  Pickachu, (or Stinkbug, for reasons the moniker implies) is growing fast, although she seems destined to be a short-legged cat.  She is heart-meltingly affectionate and hilarious, as she tries to do all sorts of silly things.  She’s been loving the laptop boxes I’ve had at home as I work remotely.  I’ll wrap up this post with her doing her best settle into one.

The binging continues …

I’m still devouring books, mostly re-reads with a few new ones too, but I still haven’t found my groove on the blogging thing.

The books on the right are recently finished new books, except for Heroes which I’m currently listening to, and the books on the left are all re-reads.  The biggest problem I have is myself:  I insist on adding each book to my book database here on WP and it’s sort of a pain in the ass to do it, especially when you have about 1000 of them still to go.  So of course, I put it off.

Anyway, I’m off work this week, so I’m going to try to chip away at the piles, adding new reviews for the new books and bringing old reviews over for the re-reads.

In other news, a feline miracle was recorded here last week:

We expected the world to explode, in the way one does when matter and anti-matter collide, but either God himself intervened, or – and this is more likely – Easter-cat just couldn’t be bothered getting up from her comfy spot on the quilt to administer the beat-down she thinks Pickachu deserves.  But you can tell she’s thinking about it.

Books, quilts and cats – I am so spoiled!

The last time I was in Florida, I conned my sister into agreeing to make a quilt for me.  I picked out a patten (SO hard), and went shopping for the fabric.  While we were picking out fabrics, I fell in love with another pattern and I realised what a rabbit hole quilting can be.  I always figured I’d maybe get my quilt the next time I was visiting home.  HA!

Fast forward to yesterday and I get a box in the mail.  It’s been so long I’d forgotten what I’d even picked out, but gah!  I love it!

And so does Pickachu.  You can’t easily see it in the picture, but the backing is a map of the world, which just seems to work perfectly.  Tucked into the box were a few surprises too:

A quilted pad for Pickachu’s hammock;

Three new oven mitts and 4 new hot pan pads, as well as a few knitted nests for us to use to hold eggs while we play Wingspan.

And wait! There’s more!  I got ANOTHER quilt!

Each book is one of my personal canon titles, and each one is quilted differently.  They’re all awesome, but a few standouts:

I’d have rather gone home to collect my goodies in person, but they DID arrive just in time for S. Hemisphere’s winter and are doubly welcome.  I’m looking forward to a winter of reading while cozied up underneath my personal canon.

2021: From slumping to binging, my (half) year of bi-polar reading

Well, those of us on a little plot of land at the bottom of the world we like to call Melbourne are in the middle of our 4th hard lockdown as officials try to nail down an Indian variant that escaped out of hotel quarantine in Adelaide.  The poor man who served as the virus’s escape route did everything right: 14 days of quarantine, and 3 (4?) negative tests, only to find out after making his way home to Melbourne that an infected person on his hotel floor opened their door more or less 12 minutes earlier than he did to collect their meal.  How much does that suck?  The government ought to give that poor man a refund.

Anyhoo, this lockdown has been different for me.  Whereas previous lockdowns found me restless and lacking any desire to follow normal routines, leading to a massive, prolonged reading slump that lasted well into April, the start of #4 found me completely on the other end of the spectrum.  I’ve been binge reading at epic levels, to the detriment of almost everything else.  They’ve all been re-reads of favorite urban fantasy series, back-to-back, with no breaks in between.  33 books covering 3 series in a little less than 24 days.  Whew.  I’m a little shell-shocked, but mostly, I’ve run out of urban fantasy series to re-read and I’m not yet in a mystery mood.

I’m not going to re-review any of these books, though I’m using this as an opportunity to bring over the original reviews (if they exist) from my BookLikes archive, so apologies in advance for the mini flash flood coming your way.  What I will say here is that of the three series I’ve re-read:  Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series, the Alpha and Omega spin-off series and Darynda Jones’ Grim Reaper series, Brigg’s hold up the best over time.  Jones’ Charlie Davidson is still a favorite, and the writing is still enjoyable, but I didn’t realise until reading all 13 back to back just how close to paranormal romance the series sits.  I tried to read Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series but couldn’t muster enthusiasm after the 1st book; her writing just doesn’t hold up that well, though later books might improve – I can’t remember.

For anyone who might be wondering how our new family member is going:  she’s hell on 4 paws.  Also sweeter than anything and a massive fan of playing fetch, and even more oddly, water.

Look at you, Pikachu!

Meet Pikachu – the newest member of our menagerie.  Also called ‘bug’.

After our last 3-cat stint with Wasabi, we swore there was NO WAY we’d ever be a three-cat household again.  NO WAY.  Uh-uh.

My consolation is that MT caved first.  The pet supply we shop at has been working in partnership with a cat rescue for the last few years – the start of which is when I stopped going into the pet supply store, because I want to save All. the. Kitties.  MT has held strong the last 3 years but recently, he just couldn’t take it any more, and after going through the long application process, we found bug.

Easter and Carlito are plotting their revenge.  I can tell it’s going to be a protracted revenge that will include much hissing, spitting and screaming on Easter’s part and long diatribes on Carlito’s.  But I’m hoping Pikachu will win them over; she’s achingly sweet, and is 100% human oriented, which means she has no interest in playing or cuddling with our two curmudgeons.  Hopefully when they start to understand that, peace will return to our land.

In the meantime: