Cat Toy Audit 2012-13

Well, the new tax year is nearly upon us, and so it's time to complete the audit of our toys. We keep our toys in the living room, in a blue trug and a basket (which used to be Rachel's sewing basket until we decided it was the right size for sitting in...). Rachel tipped them all out on the floor and we helped her group them by type. She was a bit surprised at how many we have... so we thought you might like to see them before she makes us pick some to get rid of (boo!).

Numbers 1-6 are various handmade coasters and mats which Rachel made for other purposes but which we requisitioned for our own uses. More important, I think you'll agree.

7, 8 and 9 are kickers - 8 is a Kong Kickeroo which we LOVE, 7 and 9 are Rachel's handsewn attempts which are not that popular (shh, don't tell her).

11 is the top part of a bed which Rachel bought at some expense for us. Unfortunately we hated the bottom part as it was filled with polystyrene beads, so that's in the loft, but we quite like licking the fur part. 10 and 12 are new catnip mats which Rachel's made for us recently - Lila loves these! I am not so bothered about catnip myself. If you're interested in buying some of these for your cat look out for them in our shops soon.

13 and 14 are handknitted scarves which I've taken a liking to, dragging them through the house to hide in various dark corners. Rachel says they are NOT toys and she's going to put them back in the cupboard... 15 is a length of feather boa which we absolutely LOVE playing with, and sitting and licking. Sometimes we get pink fluffy bits in our poop... heehee!

Next, the seafood section: 16 is a cute little catnip prawn; 17 a crocheted fishy, 18 a Yeowww catnip fish from the USA.

19-21 are prototype catnip toys Rachel made which we are totally not fussed about (they are going in the bin!). 22 is a vibrating bunny keyring which never fails to terrify Lila no matter how many times she's seen it.

Now we come to the large rodent section! 23 is the wonderful Cedric, remember him (I hardly do, despite our brief but intense love affair last year...). 24 and 25 were from Pets at Home; 28-32 are the crocheted quintuplets with their Mum #33. 34 and 35 are lovely big knitted catnip mice which we got from Katz Castle last time we stayed there. We like bringing these to Rachel and Pete wherever they are in the house! 36 was made from an old vest of Rachel's, now sadly tailless (bin!); 37 and 38 from an old jumper; 39-43 made from other old tshirts and tops. 44 must be the grey meece's Caribbean cousin. 45 is supposed to whizz along the floor on clockwork wheels, but doesn't work on the carpet (bin); 46 and 47 are supposed to be good for our teeth but they're too small really to be any fun. 48 is a Kong Wubba wot we love.
49 to 51 are more prototypes - these ones catnip fish and we have found them pretty fun - again, look out for them in the shops soon!

52 a freebie from Zooplus where we get our food - we love licking the feathers. 53 is oddly a tiny cat which one of us ferreted out from somewhere and claimed as our own... 54 an old gardening glove, and 55 an ostrich feather Rachel and Pete brought home for us from a South African's wedding! Loads of fun! 56 and 57 pinecones (fun for a few minutes); 58 and 59 are thread reels, great for batting around on the floor, just make sure all the thread's finished first!

60 and 61 are catnip knots Rachel bought us from the London Pet Show; 62 some random thing knotted out of an old top which is fun to play tug of war with. 63-65 are random crochet items Rachel made for us (no catnip, so we're not even bothered, innit).

BALLS! 66 and 67 are crinkly foil ones Rachel got while on holiday in the US last year - we were totally not fussed at the time but having them out again for the audit has shown us how fun they are! 68 and 69; not really sure why these are there - who do they think we are, dogs?! 70 and 71 have rattly things inside, we love these, for the seven seconds they stay out of the underneath of the sofa! 72 and 73 are very odd - the inners of Rachel's roll-on deodorant - lots of fun for batting around the tiled kitchen floor. 74 is supposed to glow in the dark, but doesnt; finally 75 is the most expensive toy Rachel and Pete have ever bought us - there's a mouse in it and it rolls around with a very realistic squeak. Are we bothered? NO WAY!

77 is probably our long-running favourite, Kiwi. Kiwi is the toy Lila carries around the house in her mouth when she's looking for Rachel or Pete. She makes a funny yowling noise when she does it, it's very cute (you can see a video of this here). If she can't find them, like if they're out at work, she just leaves Kiwi in the middle of the lounge floor so they know she's been thinking about them. At night, Rachel has to take Kiwi upstairs with her otherwise Lila yowls for the humans all night and wakes them up! (oops).

OK where are we? The last few things - don't worry, you're nearly there! 78, the laser pointer.
79 and 80, cheapo fishing toys from Wilkos which are now permanently united in a Gordian knot (bin!).
Finally 81, the homemade fishing toy Rachel made us - much better than the bought ones!! Mia drags this around the house, which is especially funny when she tries to get it through a door the wrong way round...

WHOA that's a lot of toys! Well thank goodness we only have to do this once a year... Rachel has plans to slim down our toy collection, but that's fine if she's going to replace them with superior toys, which I'm sure is her plan! How many toys do your cats have? As many as us?!

The Cats of Rome

We had our FOURTH stay of 2012 in the cat hotel last week! Can you believe it, how lucky are we! We got a garden view again, and this time we could see chickens AND sheep.

The reason we were in the cat hotel was that Rachel and Pete were on ANOTHER holiday. This time they went to Rome, which sounds a bit of a faff really. Rachel was pretty happy though, as on the first day of their holiday they came across some cats. (Well, she says they "just happened" to come across them; Pete says she had it all planned out before they even left the UK - I think we know who to believe!). The cats live in a square called Torre Argentina which is a site of various ancient Roman temples, and also apparently where Juli-puss Caesar was stabbed. Ooh! Now it's mostly a ruin of great archaeological importance, but you can't go into the square to walk around... UNLESS you are a cat!

There is a no-kill cat sanctuary there run by some very lovely ladies - you can see their website here. When people in Rome find a poorly or stray cat, they often bring them to this sanctuary, where they are treated, sterilised, and then either adopted out or allowed to live amongst the ruins for the rest of their life. How cool is that! There are a LOT of cats in Rome; Rachel and Pete saw them in the Coliseum and lots of the other places they visited.

The nice ladies at the sanctuary were very happy to show Rachel and Pete around the quarantine area - where new cats stay for a while. They learned all about the work the sanctuary does and met lots of the residents.

This little cat was hilarious - Pete squatted down to look in a cage and the kitty jumped up onto his back! Nice work.

He's sitting in Rachel's hat here, which she put down on the floor for convenience. We're very happy to see that the idea of sitting in something which is clearly FAR too small for you has spread even amongst the street cats of southern Europe.







These guys were just hanging out. Rachel said she was really impressed with how well all the cats got along, considering sometimes we can't even be friends, HMPH.










This little guy was hanging out in a cage with his brothers, while the vets worked out if they had any nasty diseases. Look at those ear tufts!!











Sleepy time! The ladies at the sanctuary said that some of the cats in this part were going abroad to be adopted - one was going to Germany.

This cat had a poorly eye, like quite a lot of the cats there. But they all seemed very happy!










Then Rachel and Pete said thank you, gave the ladies some money, and went to see the cats outside in the ruins. But first they had to retrieve Rachel's hat...











Outside, all the cats have the tip of their ear missing, it's a sign that they've been sterilised, so no-one catches them and tries to do it again! 

This little calico lady was watching the cats in the "hospital" area - these were sanctuary cats who had strayed outside the ruins and been knocked by a car. Poor things - there are a LOT of cars in Rome; and the ruin is essentially a sunken roundabout with roads on all sides!

This cat reminds me of Bertrum Thumbcat from the Cravendale ads!








Can you spot (at least) three cats in this next photo?

These cats were relaxing in the shade. I would have sunned myself on a nice altar or something, personally, and looked for ancient bloodstains...












These cats really do have a huge playground to call home. It's quite amazing.







This was Rachel's favourite cat from outside. Such a lovely big chap (or chapess!). And so photogenic! Do you want a British penpal, Ginger?!

So, if you ever visit Rome, we strongly recommend you visit the cat sanctuary at Largo di Torre Argentina. It's very central, a nice break from the hubbub of the city, and will definitely help if you're missing your kitty cats while on holiday!!

Mia the Vanquisher of Arachnids

That is me! Vanish... vanisher... of arra... arrows... Oh OK, I don't really know what those words mean, Lila thought up that title for me...

I have been being SUPER BRAVE recently as I've been protecting Rachel and Pete from a DEADLY INVASION of nasty icky (delicious) spiders. They're often spotted around the doors...When I see one, I give a warning sound (it sounds like mik-mik-mik-mik) so that the humans know not to approach. They are so stupid though, they always DO approach!

DON'T come any closer! This one's HUGE!

Then I round up the spider and corrall it between my mighty paws, and give it the patented Mia Smack of Doom.

I'm not scared of you, spidey.

I give it a sniff, to check it's been neutralised, and see if it might make a tasty snack.

Smells dead...

The small ones are the yummiest - the big ones I tend to just play with for a while until they are dead or disabled and then leave them for Rachel to clean up. Their legs can be a bit crunchy...

OK, you can clean it up now.

No need to thank me for keeping the humans safe, it's the least I could do. I hope your cats are protecting you too...

Summer's Done!

Hi everyone, I don't even know what excuse to give about how little we've blogged over the summer. I can only a-paw-logise. I'm not even going to try and pin all the blame on Rachel like usual, as we have been pretty lazy too... But now it's September we thought it was about time to get you up to date on what we have been doing during August. A lot of the time we were just sitting in the sun.

This used to be Rachel's sewing basket until we found it. LOL!

Apart from that, we've mostly been watching the Olympics and Paralympics. Rachel and Pete went to loads of Olympic events, but we didn't get to go to any! Instead... we got a special scratching box:

Room for a small one?

Ding Ding, all aboard!

Although we didn't get to visit Olympic park, we did watch plenty of the coverage on our new flatscreen TV. It's much thinner than the big boxy old one, so when Mia tried to jump on top of it like we used to ALL THE TIME, it fell over and Pete said some really rude words that we'd never even heard before!! When we weren't trying to destroy hundreds of pounds worth of electrical equipment, we were cheering on the athletes:

I'm a gold meow-dal winner!

Go Mo, Go Jess, Go Team GB

Ooh, shiny shiny!

But some of us weren't QUITE so interested in the sports...

We also had a visit to the Cat Hotel again, and this time it REALLY was 4 star. We got to stay in a part that we had never been to before, we had half of a lovely chalet in the garden to ourselves, with our own verandah, and the inside bit was really big too, much bigger than normal. We could watch birdies and the resident cats all day, and stretch out in the sun, and it was just BRILLIANT!  Rachel says now that she knows these posh rooms are there, we can stay in them every time we visit. AWESOME!

So that's mostly what we've been up to. What have you been doing?

PS - Obligatory tongue shot of Mia, what a silly chops!

Summer's Here!

We've had about two months of constant rain here in England, and not just unrelenting drizzle, but the kind of monsoon rain that makes you think you're in Mumbai or somewhere! We've been either stuck inside in the dry, or when we do venture out, we're likely to get caught in a downpour and just have to hope we can find somewhere we can sit and wait it out without getting too drenched.

But this weekend the sun came out and we remembered how fun it is to play outside! And Rachel remembered how fun it is to take lots of photos of us - she cleared about 30GB of photos and videos of us off the laptop in June so I think she's been a bit scared of filling it up again too fast...

But how can she resist Mia posing in front of the heuchera?

Unfortunately with all the rain the garden has got a bit overgrown...

The grass has been too wet to cut as well so there's plenty to play with... and munch!

My favourite place to hang out is under the washing line, the grass is always long there even when it does get cut, so it's a good place to hide and wait to ambush your portly tortie friend...

Hm where is she... This sun is lovely and warm... Always ready to ambush though... always alert... always ready to... yawn... pounce... al...ways...

zzz...

Mog's Togs Friend - Pepper!

Pep in the Box!

It's been a while since we chatted to one of our Mog's Togs Friends, but hopefully it's worth the wait as today we have cute-as-a-button PEPPER to talk to! This little sweetheart belongs to Elli from heartstitch, maker of super cute things!

What's your name, how old are you, and where do you live?

My name is Pepper, and I are 1 and a halfs years olds.  I lives in Plymouth – there are lots of houses and humans and not much grass to eats, but loads of good climbing walls and hidey holes and I has made all the friends!

Who do you live with? What's the best and worst thing about living with them?

Daddy-o!

I lives with mah two humans - my mummy and daddy, and the other cat - Bracken.  The humans are nice – they gives the foods and the cuddles! They also lets me out to play and take away the nasties in the sand box.  The best thing about the humans is the foods – I is SO good at mewing and looking cute and almost every time they give me foods! The worst is when I do the cute face and there is no foods – I works hard to look this good!  

Bracken

 Bracken is ok, I guess. She is ALWAYS grumpy and hisses at me when I sniff her – I just wants to be friends! Sometimes we sit together though, and has cat-chats, mostly when the humans is not around – we bond over how mad we are that we is not alloweds in their sleeping room.  Their bed is SO comfy! When they forgets to shut the door I sneaks in and has a nap, but Bracken’s a goody four paws and sits in her bed in the long room. I likes our cat-chats, but the worst is her purrs. Is SO noisy! She soundses like a bird cooing, and she purrs at nothings – the humans has to work hard for my purrs, but Bracken purrs if a human comes near her.  She mad.

What has been your greatest adventure / scariest moment?

T-R-O-U-B-L-E

The greatest adventures are when I gets to go outsides! I likes to go see my boyfriend Harry (he lives upstairs and has the bestest softest longest ginger furs).  He waits for me by the door flap and we rubs noses and we chases each other around the garden.  The humans tease me and makes silly noises like ‘ahhhhh’. Sometimes I even sneaks into Harrys house but his humans and his sister don’t like it when I do.  I don’t cares.  I are loving the warms – it makes all the weird buzzy things come out and I likes to chases them and catch them, and then I eats them.  The humans made a big fuss the other day when I ate a big furry buzzy thing, it was yellow and black… I think they calleds it a B? They was wafflings on about something called a sting and they mentioned the V-E-T. We do not like the V-E-T, he always pokeses us and prodses us, and sometimes he takes away mah claws and once he even stuck something in my neck! I don’t knows what they were worrieds about though, I feels fine!  I do like to eat a lot of things.  The humans says I has pika so is not my faults, but they get angry when I eats the ‘cables’ and the ‘sellotape’ and the ‘plastic’… I dunno - smells like foods to me, and feels nice on my teeths.  



The scariest time was when I was away from home for 5 days.  I got shut in somewhere, and there were some humans – but they weren’t nice humans like my two… They didn’t even gives me foods! My collar didn’t fits when I came homes and I’s a trim kitty as it is!  Daddy gave me a sniff when I came home and said I smelled like I had been with some naughty humans, and then mummy wouldn’t stop cuddlings me and didn’t lets me out for weeks! It made me very grumpy, but I had missed my nice humans – at least they feeds me!

Helping with the cutting and the sewing!

There was another scary time when I had found THE BEST place to play – the humans have this thing that they fill with water and lie down in that has a bit at the front that I can pulls open a bit, and underneath it is all the dusts and stuff and there is a hole! You can climbs down it and is all dark and funs, I thinks I saw a meece down there once! Only problem was, the humans closed the gap after me, and I was stuck down there.  I mewed and I meweds and I knew they could hear me cuz they were calling me, but silly humans don’t understands the mewings.  They were going to call out the fire people – they didn’t know about mah little hole under the water holder, but they worked it out eventually, even if maybes I did get a little losts (is hards in the dark!) they put some foods out by the water holder and I did sniffs my ways out. 

What would be your perfect day?

Only Daddy gets shoulder cuddles!

The perfects day… I woulds wake ups at 5am likes normals, but the humans would have let me sleep in their bed. And they wouldn’t have fidgeteds all night like usuals! And they would wakes ups then too and give me ALL the fussums – they don’t like 5am cuddles, they yell L  Then they would feeds me a mountain of tuna – I don’t gets to has it very often – only if the humans are hasing it, and fishy flavoured kitty kibbles? Forgets it – mummy says it smells bad L I would go see Harry, and play in his house – his humans gives him ALL the toys and he has two fancy sand boxes with doors and lids, (but his humans make him do one types of ‘business’ in one and the other types in another – poor Harry, I don’t let my humans decides wheres I do mine! I do mostlys go in the sandboxes though – and I has trained my human to go clean it immediately!)  Harrys humans also have some fancy tiny waterfall in their house that he drinks from – I just has a bowl. I wants a waterfall!  After a quick wash, we would go outside and play, and I’d probably catch some more buzzy things and eat them too – SO tastys! Then the humans would come out and feed me all the Dreamies, but they would be fishy Dreamies, though I do like the chicken ones I gets normallys.  Quick catnap, then more playing! Oh, and more tuna too! Then I would climbs up on daddy’s shoulder for evening cuddles, and then sleeps on the bed again when it is night time. *Purr*

Which is your favourite Mog's Togs collar?

Modelling her Daisy Parade!

Mummy gots me mah firsts Mog’s Togs collar the other day.  It’s not like the last ones.  Is soft. And it doesn’t hang like the last ones, it fitses so I can’t bites it off. I struggleds when the humans tried to put it on, but now is on is okay, I don’t really notices it.  Mummy says the human who made it made it special for me cuz I is so tiny.  When she says tiny I think what she means is ferocious.  Daddy says the best things comes in small packages though.  He’s my favourites.  My collar is super prettys, and none of my kitty friends has the same one – even Harry is jealousies and he has ALL the posh stuffs! I has the Daisy Parade one, but I hopes the humans get me more – I wants a different one for each day of the week!  Mummy says you can’t really see it anyway cuz mah fur is all thick but she is a silly mummy – Ima try to pose so she can sees it and then she will gets me more! 

Mummy promised me Dreamies if I typed this… If I no gets them Ima pee on the curtains again! 

I'm assured Pepper DID get Dreamies and the curtains remain unsullied - Ed. She's so cute, how about a few more photos for us all to coo over!

Massage time

Real men love cats!

Bye Fans!

If you'd like us to feature your cat as a Mog's Togs Friend, please have them answer the following questions, and send us the answers along with at least one good quality photo of them to rachel@mogstogs.com (send more photos if you like!).

1. What's your name, how old are you, and where do you live?
2. Who do you live with? (Humans and other animals) What's the best and worst thing about living with them?
3. What has been your greatest adventure / scariest moment?
4. What would be your perfect day?
5. Which is your favourite Mog's Togs collar?

We recommend payment of 5 Dreamies or Whiskas Temptations as reward for your cat, for submitting to such a rigorous interview.  If you have a blog or Folksy/Etsy etc shop of your own feel free to let Rachel know the link and we'll include it. We can't wait to hear from you!

Garden Invader AGAIN!

Ok... grovel grovel... we haven't blogged for a whole MONTH!! Sorry!! We've got to let Rachel off the hook though - she had her viva exam for her PhD, so was working hard on that and didn't have time to study, AND sort lovely cats out with their collars, AND type up our blog posts too. Good news though - she passed her exam so now is pretty much a Dr! Hurrah!

What's that, Rachel? You're not a Dr of medicine? You can't save anyone's life? What's the point of that!! Hmm, Mrs PRETEND DOCTOR, well I suppose you ARE still qualified to type up our musings for us... (mutter mutter... Gillian McKeith... mutter mutter...)

So, last time but one we blogged, we mentioned the naughty black-and-white garden invader, AKA Bella, AKA cheeky monkey. And if you remember, we were worried that while we were away at the cat spa for a couple of weeks, she'd take over our garden... well, we were kind of right. Just take a look at this video from the week we were back! NO RESPECT!

Gosh, the youth of today! All that talking back she does!

And the worst of it is that we're off to the cat spa again today, and so god knows what'll have happened when we get back...