Tag Archives: cats

The Cat Sitter

Posted on January 4, 2013 | 31 Comments

So if you have been following my blog for a while this will probably come as no surprise to you, but I really like cats. I like dogs too, sure. I like pretty much any animal. But cats…I don’t even know what it is about them. I just love them. I have been known to be a little bit of a cat whisperer, and I feel like I can make even the bitchiest cat fall in love with me.

So perhaps it is my love of cats that made two of my friends ask me if I would mind catsitting for them over the holidays, I do not know. But apparently my catsitting skills are in high demand, because two of my friends did hit me up for this. And since I love cats, I accepted.

So let’s meet the kitties.

This is Marbles.

marbles

Marbles is very cute, and belongs to my former coworker and office bestie Lexy and her husband Mark ( <- check out his blog if you haven’t, it’s great!).

It was really hard to get a decent picture of Marbles, because, well, she hated me. She legit hated me. I hunted her down and forced a Christmas snuggle on her, but she did not like it.

marbles1

She was not a fan. I didn’t even know what to do about this because cats love me! I thought she would come around and we would become friends, but it got progressively worse after the forced snuggle. The last time I dropped by to check on her she was hiding under a bed in the basement, and as soon as I stepped down the last step to go down and see her she started hissing. Sad times.

Marbles and I did not become BFF’s like I had envisioned, sadly, but it is okay! I had a backup cat (Lex and Mark, I need to take a second and apologize for shafting your cat and raving on about the next cat, but Marbles didn’t really give me any blog material…)

So this is Kitten the Cat.

kitten-the-cat

Is that not the most gorgeous creature you have ever seen?

I had to text Lexy and tell her about the other cat I was catsitting…

photo

(Yes, apparently they can Lex.)

Anyway, Kitten belongs to my good friend Catherine (or CathRON as I have called her for 10+ years because I had a dream that was how she spelled her name). I have mentioned Kitten on my blog several times before because HELLO HE IS AWESOME, and Catherine actually has a blog dedicated to him. I cannot take the credit for her starting the blog, but she used to post pictures of Kitten as a kitten on Facebook and I was all “YOU NEED TO START A KITTEN BLOG!” and then she did. And she does tell me that I gave her the idea to start a Kitten blog. So I will maybe take just a teensy bit of credit. But she is the one who is ultimately responsible for that awesome beast and writing those hilarious posts.

Anyway, I have seen many pictures of Kitten, but I had never had the ultimate pleasure of meeting him in person. And Catherine’s last catsitter got sexually molested by Kitten, so I was excited for some fun times.

Kitten greeted me when I walked into Catherine’s apartment for the first time like we were old friends.

kitten-1

Well, ish.

I was immediately struck by how much bigger and fluffier Kitten was in person than he is in pictures. He is a BIG CAT. He is basically a dog. I was so excited to meet him that I just picked him up immediately and got started on our snuggle fest.

catcat1cat2

I know that Kitten looks like he is a bit grumpy, but I think it is just his face. He did seem to genuinely like me. He would sit with me on the couch for quite a while and just let me molest his abnormal amount of fur with my hands. Just so much fur to run my fingers through (he didn’t actually molest me, disappointing).

I texted a picture of Kitten and I to Catherine and said that he liked me, and she immediately responded and said “YUP! That’s his happy face.”

kitten2

And who am I to disagree?

happy-face

kitten-happy

Catherine would know best though, as she is his owner. If she says that’s his happy face, that’s his happy face.

And wherever Kitten was, and whatever he was doing, he always seemed to want to be staring at me.

what

Even if he was sitting all comfy in my lap, he would crane his neck all weird like in The Exorcist, and just stare at me.

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I felt like he was staring directly into my soul.

I really think he could give Grumpy Cat and Colonel Meow a run for their money. Though honestly I am not sure if he’s a cat or a buffalo…

cat-buffalo

Or perhaps a walrus?

cat-walrus

Whatever he is, I really, really liked him. I want one.

kitten-snugglesnuggle

I just took so many pictures of him and I want to share them all!

love

I couldn’t get enough!

So those were my adventures in catsitting Marbles and Kitten over the holidays. I’m serious, check Kitten the Cat out! Catherine is finishing law school and doesn’t have time to blog very much, but when she does post it is gold in cat form.

And I will leave you with some photos of Kitten as a kitten…

kitten-kitten

And after a bath…

bat-kitten

And again…

kitten-evil

Okay, that’s all. Sorry if you don’t like cats (but as I said, he could also be a buffalo or a walrus). I will be back with less cats next week. Have a great weekend!

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Posted in Humour, Kitty Cats, Random Musings

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The Greatest Dog Show in the World, Only with Cats

Posted on July 16, 2012 | 20 Comments

Last week my friend Hannah and I were searching for free events in Toronto happening this weekend, and we came across this:

A cat show?! No. Way. I don’t think I have ever heard of a cat show.

We both definitely laughed at the idea of a cat show at first, but then Hannah asked me if I actually wanted to go, and I didn’t hesitate when I said yes. I love cats. Hannah loves cats (she even looked after my cat Winnie while I was away). What better way to celebrate our love for little kitty cats than to go to a real-deal cat show?

So, yesterday we hit up the cat show.

It was actually a lot of fun, and also kind of hilarious. I feel like it may have been more fun for us because we are kind of jokesters, and didn’t take the cat show extremely seriously (unlike the breeders and many of the other cat ladies in attendance). Walking around and petting all the different types of kitties was awesome.

I have never seen so many different breeds of cats in one place. I guess I am not as cat savvy as I thought, as some I hadn’t even heard of before. Like the Cornish Rex, for example.

Definitely a bit weird looking with their short hair, but still super cute and playful.

This seemed to be the most predominant breed at the show. There were a lot of them kicking around.

Also, they don’t shed! So if you’re allergic to cats this may be a good kitty option for you.

And there were these cute little muffins…

I’m pretty sure they shed a LOT, but I still wanted to shove them both in my purse and take them home with me.

The prettiest cats we saw were the Bengals though, hands down.

I love these kitties. They look like mini leopards. If they weren’t $1,500 for a purebred I’d consider getting one right meow (Hannah nearly did). Though I’m not sure Winnie would be down with that…

We also saw what I consider to be the sexiest cat breed of all time, the Maine Coon.

Now that is a sexy minx. And also a huge beast. They are the largest domestic cat breed, and males range from 15 to 25 pounds. That’s a big cat, yo.

For the actual cat show portion, a man brought the cats out of their cages one by one to show to the judges and the crowd.

He would point out specific things about each kitty, like their size, shape, and their markings.

And he would play with the kitties a little bit, to show them in their feisty form.

I was just using my iPhone camera though, so my photos of the cats playing are all blurry.

The cat’s breeders would then get a ribbon, depending on how well their cat looked/performed. Basically just like a dog show. But I’m just guessing on that,  I’ve never been to one!

Maybe I will enter Winnie into a cat show.

Just kidding Winnie, you are a mutt. She was born under my friend Emily’s neighbour’s air conditioner, parented by who knows who, and I have a feeling being a purebred may be a requirement.

She is still the best little kitty in all the land though.

And speaking of cats, I think my friend Catherine’s cat Kitten could definitely be a cat show contender.

If he acted a little more professionally and didn’t sit around spread-eagle all the time. He is a beautiful specimen.

He also just got a haircut at the groomers, and he now looks like this!

If I were a judge at a cat show, I’d give Kitten a gold ribbon for straight-up hilariousness.

If you like cats, you should go check out Catherine’s blog, Kitten The Cat. It makes me laugh very, very hard.

Anyway, fun times at the cat show for sure. It was a good way spend a Sunday afternoon.

Hope you kitties had a great weekend! Bet it wasn’t as fun as mine at the cat show, suckas!

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Posted in Kitty Cats

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I Love Your Blog, Dawg.

Posted on May 17, 2012 | 15 Comments

I need to clear something up, as many of you asked in my last post. Poutine is fries covered with cheese curds and gravy. Apparently it is only a Canadian thing (and possibly a New Orleans thing?) which I don’t understand at all, as it isn’t exactly difficult to come up with. It’s fries. With cheese and gravy. I don’t know why this is such a foreign concept.

If you have never tried it, you’re missing out. It’s amazing. Just so delicious. And absolutely terrible for you, so I only have it a couple times a year. You can make it with shredded cheese too, but cheese curds are better, in my opinion. The cheese gets all melty and perfectly stringy.

Anyway, glad that’s out of the way…

Not much is new over here. My Wonderland and prom adventures are basically all I’ve been up to this week besides work stuff. And sometimes my work is exciting, but not so much right now. Right now it’s just busy. I have been glued to my computer for the past few days working on my organization’s magazine, which is a time consuming little sucker. But I do love it when it’s done and all glossy and fab looking!

So not really doing anything = I don’t have much to talk about. But thankfully a couple of my fellow bloggers tagged me in an award! This means I have things to talk about AND I don’t have to do a lot of thinking. Win-win.

It was two different awards actually, but they are basically the same thing: talk about your favourite blogs. There are a few other rules, but I am choosing to ignore them. I read a lot of blogs (usually, I have been slacking lately), so I just want to tell you about the illustrated blogs I have been loving lately, and maybe you will love them too.

Here they are:

Touch of Embellishment

I don’t remember how I discovered Erica’s blog, probably from Stephanie (who I will get to in a moment), as I seem to discover all my new blog lovers from her. But the first post I read was called Dirty Fruit Man, and it lured me in immediately.

She is a story-teller like moi, and she beautifully illustrates her posts. The facial expressions of her characters really make me laugh, and her stories remind me of my own! We have a kindred spirit for sure. Weird things definitely happen to us both (my friend Beth always tells me that she thinks weird things happen to me because I can take it, and Erica, I think you can take it too!)

Erica herself reminds me a lot of my friend Catherine (who also has a blog, Kitten The Cat), so I immediately sent Catherine the link to the dirty fruit man post and we laughed about a similar story we have from when we used to work together at Dairy Queen (I will illustrate it one day, so I can’t tell you about it just yet).

Upon discovering Erica’s blog, I read through the entire thing. I couldn’t stop. She just kills me! I talked to Catherine about it later, and she mentioned she did the same, went back and read every post. So yeah, I think Erica is awesome, and I can’t get enough of her stories. Go read her blog. Or at least this post.

Clay Baboons

I love Stephanie. I followed along with her first blog, Love Life Project, and I loved her then. I really liked that she called herself a happy-living blog, because I think I am kind of a happy-living blog as well, so I could relate. And then she started her new blog, Clay Baboons, and I cannot rave about her enough. She is ridiculously creative with all her clay figurines, and she puts so much effort into her posts.

(source)

She also may be one of the nicest people I know (and yes I do feel like I know her, it’s funny how blogging works that way. Plus, we are Facebook friends, so of course that means we are real-life friends). And she makes me laugh. That is very important.

Blunder Construction

I will be honest, I just discovered Hailey’s blog two days ago. She sent me an insanely awesome tweet about how she thought that I was funny, and then she instantly became my favourite.

Just so you are all aware, if you tell me I am funny, I will love you for life. It’s my favourite compliment. It’s even better if the person who tells you that you are funny is also funny, because it makes your funniness more legit since they are funny, and funny people should be able to recognize funniness when they see it. It is a cycle of funniness. So I went over to Blunder Construction to see if Hailey was funny so I could fully bask in the glow of her funny compliment, and oh man. She is funny.

First of all, she has an awesome cat, so we share that in common…

(That is her cat, Jelly)

She has an entire page devoted to Jelly (and she loves him so much she recently made him a cat birthday cake, and I’m probably going to copy that recipe), she has probably the best bio I’ve ever seen (and I’m probably going to copy that also), and then there is the Blank the Kitty section.

Effing genius. May also copy.

Thank you for tweeting to me Hailey, and saying that I’m funny! I’m excited that I found you.

Creative Devolution

Violet just kills me with hilariousity. I don’t even know what else to say about her. I laugh out loud every time I read her (but not LOL, I don’t do that). She is so funny and her illustrations are awesome.

This is another blog I read almost in entirety when I discovered it. And I am so impressed with how often she posts, because I know how long those drawings take! She’s amazing. And I am just in awe of her creativity. I’d like to kidnap her brain.

And I really need to give a shout-out to the beautiful Eden from Eden Eats Everything.

Her blog is not illustrated, but I love her, and she always makes me laugh. She is going through an extremely difficult time right now, as her father has a fatal brain tumour and things are just not good there… But even in the midst of dealing with that, she still makes me laugh! It has really put my own life and problems in perspective, and makes me never want to complain about anything again. If she can still find a way to be positive despite all the crappiness (understatement and a half) in her life, so can I. For sure.

So please send Eden some love. I am sure she could use all of our positive thoughts.

And I hope you enjoy the rest of these amazing bloggers as well!

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Posted in Blogging

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Dexter the Cat’s Big Adventure

Posted on December 29, 2011 | 31 Comments

If you have a cat, you probably know what I’m talking about when I say cats are very sneaky. I love cats, but they are weird, I will just say.

I have two kitty cats, Winnie and Dexter, who are the best of friends.

But they are very different. Winnie, being 16, is much more lazy now than she is sneaky, and cuddling is her favourite thing in the world.

And her second most favourite thing in the world is probably the Alpine Scratcher.

She loves it a lot.

But at 5 years old, Dexter is still a young kitty and in his crazy and sneaky prime. He does not enjoy cuddling. He enjoys sleeping alone in the dark on the cold floor (preferably cement), and his favourite thing in the world is closets. He is always sneaking into dark spaces. If I open any door in our house that isn’t usually open (closets, storage room, furnace room, etc), Dexter is in there immediately checking it out.

Last night when I went into our usually closed office to grab a DVD, I should have known Dexter was right behind me. I should have known he was going to be all “OMG! I haven’t been in this room for weeks! What is new in here?!”

But I didn’t see him.

And when I left the room with my DVD and shut the door behind me, I didn’t notice that Dexter was in there. I also didn’t notice that Dexter was missing all evening, and neither did Andrew.

If you have dogs, you may think that’s weird. But cats are not all up in your grill all the time the way that dogs are. If Winnie was missing, I would notice pretty quickly because she is constantly around me trying to squeeze in some cuddle action.

But not Dexter. He is usually off somewhere by himself being all sneaky and secretive anyway. If he is around at bedtime I will say goodnight to him, but if not, no big D. He’s probably off being weird somewhere.

This morning I headed straight to the gym after I woke up, so I again did not notice that Dexter wasn’t around. When I got back, Ando and I were hangjng out upstairs and we started to hear a faint meowing. We looked around a bit, calling the kitties’ names, and then realized it was coming from the office downstairs. We discovered Dexter in there. He had been locked in the office for about 12 hours :( .

He was pissed when we let him out.

He was physically fine, and did not have any accidents despite being in the room without a litter box, but his meows sounded a lot more bitchy and whiny than usual, and he ignored us for a good hour afterwards.

We felt so terrible. He must have been so scared. We gave him a treat to try to make it up to him (he is back to his elusive and sneaky self now).

We noticed that he did attempt an escape. He tried to dig himself out through the door to the bathroom.

No dice for Dexy. Poor sneaky kitty. I’ll forgive him for ripping up the carpet.

Annnnd, this marks the second time I have locked a cat in a small space for a prolonged period of time, as you may remember I once accidentally locked my friend’s cat in a suitcase for three days.

Please don’t think I am a horrible person. Cats are just sneaky!

What is the worst thing you have accidentally done to your pet?

This is probably it for me. The suitcase trumps this, but that wasn’t my own pet (not that that is any better).

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Posted in Kitty Cats

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Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 25, 2011 | 7 Comments

Merry Christmas from Santa Kitty!

He is just kidding. He loves playing Santa.

I hope the real Santa was good to you all!

Edit: I should mention that is my Dad’s cat, not some random kitty :)

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Posted in Holidays, Kitty Cats

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A Tribute to my Halloween Kitty

Posted on October 31, 2011 | 13 Comments

Hola!

You guys have probably noticed my little kitty Winnie pop up on my blog quite often, but I have another little kitty cat who definitely doesn’t get as much blog attention.

That black thing is Dexter.

I don’t mean to leave Dexter out, but he is not quite as personable as Winnie, and he doesn’t do as many things that are blog-worthy.

Winnie loves it when you pick her up, she just molds to your body and snuggles into you. Sometimes when I sleep at night she will let me spoon her under the covers and she will stay there until I fall asleep. She is the nicest, most cuddly cat ever.

When you pick up Dexter, he just spreads his limbs out all awkwardly and tries to get away immediately. He does not let me spoon him.

Andy and I have commented many times that we feel like Dexter is just this black thing that lives in our house, and we both feel like we don’t really know him. Sometimes we forget about him. He is just a background kitty.

And kind of a weirdo.

But that being said, he is a nice kitty cat. He does like to be pet and rubbed, but only while sitting next to you. He does not like to be picked up.

The reason I am profiling Dexter today is because Halloween is his day! Doesn’t he look like the perfect Halloween kitty?

I tried to get him to raise his back so he would look like a real-deal Halloween black cat, but he wouldn’t.

Just after Christmas nearly four years ago, Ando and I were thinking about getting a kitten so we stopped by the Humane Society to see if any kitties caught our eye.

Dexter was in a cage by himself, and he was all shy and tiny and scrawny. We both liked him immediately when we held him (he was actually a little snuggly as a kitten). One of the workers told us that they found Dexter in an alley with his brothers and sisters and his mom a few weeks earlier. She also said that they were all taken to Pet Smart except for Dexter, and they all got adopted. His entire family got adopted except for him :( .

We had no idea why Dexter was left behind, but we felt bad for him and we adopted him on the spot.

Could you resist that face?

He was about 9 weeks old then, which means he was born right around this time. Which means that Halloween could be Dexter’s birthday! Since we don’t know when his actual birthday is, we like to say that it is today.

So happy birthday to my little Halloween kitty!

We gave him a little treat after dinner to celebrate.And we didn’t even make him get dressed up.

Sick Eats

I am still not feeling very well, so I took ‘er easy today and worked from home. I wasn’t very hungry at lunchtime, but I knew I should eat something or my hunger monster would make an appearance later in the afternoon.

I made myself the typical sick lunch.

Sick Lunch

Campbell’s rustic spiced lentil and vegetable soup, and a piece of whole wheat toast with butter. I do not usually eat canned soup because it is so packed with sodium (this one was low sodium, and it still had a lot of sodium), but this was the perfect lunch today.

Not as good as homemade soup, or Druxy’s soup, but it wasn’t bad.

And Andy-pants made dinner because I was a big lazy sicko.

Dinner Time!

Boneless pork tenderloin that he seasoned with a garlic and seed mustard marinade before grilling, with sweet potato fries that he sprinkled with olive oil, garlic salt and red pepper flakes and baked in the oven at 400 degrees for about half an hour. He loaded my plate up with fries and I couldn’t quite finish them all, but they were gooood.

He cheated and used a bag of pre-cut sweet potatoes that I bought on my last grocery shop, which are still fresh and unseasoned, and I will be buying those babies again! Dinner was delicious, and even better because I didn’t make it.

My plan is to couch it up for the rest of the evening. I really want to be back to work tomorrow so I want to just rest up and get betta!

I originally wanted to go for a run just as it was getting dark tonight so I could see all the kids trick-or-treating in their costumes, but I realllllly did not feel like doing any sort of physical activity.

It would be nice if I didn’t have to go anywhere and I could see the kids in their costumes from the comfort of, oh I don’t know, my own doorstep, but unfortunately no one comes to our house on Halloween.

We tried handing out candy the first two years we lived here. We hardcore pumpkin carved and I bought the best mix of mini chocolate bars ever in anticipation of all the kiddies, but we did not have one child show up. This is really weird to me because I live in a townhouse, so the houses are obviously close together and you would think ideal for trick-or-treating…but we get shafted every year, so I guess not.

Anyway, so now we are big Grinches, and I didn’t even bother buying candy this year. I will be buying a box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups tomorrow though once they go on sale. For myself :) .

Happy Halloween once again! Here’s a throwback Halloween pic for ya.

Me in Grade 3 with my old favourite kitty Princess Missy :) . She was just like Winnie, and I miss her a lot.

  • What kind of candy are you giving out this year?
  • How many kids do you usually get at your house?

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Posted in Dinner, Kitty Cats, Lunch, Random Musings

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