Best. Game. EVER.

Rachel and Pete were changing the bedsheets the other day (which, by the way, was more than overdue) and accidentally discovered the most fun game IN THE WORLD. Unfortunately the video quality is a bit rubbish, but time waits for no man! (and no woman and her fancy video camera either).

One bit of advice though, don't do this the day before you get sick and have to spend the whole day in bed, because your cats will spend the said day skidding around you as you attempt to get some sleep...

Model Cats

We've been modelling the first two limited edition Mog's Togs collars for 2012! Aren't they fun?! Mia is wearing the Tortoises one - it seemed appropriate, for a little Tortie like her. She loves the little tortoise charm as it makes her a bit more jangly as she potters around the house.

Pete says I'm the prettiest tortie in all the world! *preen*

I am sporting February's collar - it's a Valentine's Day special! It's got a little charm on too although I wasn't very good at showing it off apparently... Rachel said I was being too coy as I wouldn't look at the camera - well, would you, if there was a LEAF blowing around outside the door?!!

My favourite vantage point

Being a supermodel for the day can be tough - for example, there's never enough room backstage for everyone.

Surely there's room up there for another size zero?

And the pay isn't amazing, although having said that, Rachel said that the current going rate for top models was 3 Dreamies each, and we negotiated her up to 4 with a mixture of pitiful meows and big round eyes! How's THAT for bargaining power!

It's not MY fault you put the charm on the wrong way round!

Sorry, I don't actually get out of bed for anything less than a raw king prawn...

Play Time!

It's a shame that the holidays are over. Rachel is working hard in her new job, and Pete is busy too. We have got a temporary housemate in the shape of Rachel's brother, which means there's one extra person to play with, but we still have to entertain ourselves at times.

Here I am trying to choose which of my favourite toys to play with. From left to right... our tunnel, the little bunny, a crocheted mouse, a catnip mouse (both mice were made by Rachel), the rattly feather ball, and another random catnip thing that isn't one of my favourites but somehow made it into the shot... All our other toys are in the blue bucket.

Where should I start?

Now the rattly ball thing is great fun. It makes a great noise as I bat it around (until it rolls under the sofa...) but the best bit is the feathers on the top. I luuurrrrve licking them!

schlurp schlurp...

Although, you do have to be careful, because sometimes I lick the feathers so much that they come out, and Rachel has to chase me around to pull them out of my mouth before I eat them...

nom nom, birdy!

The catnip mouse is great for kicking. Rachel says she sews them twice so I don't immediately destroy them.

grr... why you little...

But I do adore the little bunny. When you pull his tail, he vibrates! Lila's scared of him, but I love giving him a cuddle.

I wuv you Mr Bunny!

Ooh I can't decide!!

Too much choice!

Tell you what, why don't you just give me a tummy tickle instead!!

Christmas Outtakes

Mia got so excited about the Christmas decorations coming out last weekend, Rachel got a couple of silly photos of her... I know it's rare to get a silly photo of Mia (hmm...) so we thought you'd like to see them. Obviously, they both involve tongues.

First, posing with her new collar:

I'm actually testing the wind direction...

Second, getting a bit excited while playing with the Christmas pudding:

I'm actually concentrating VERY hard

Finally, this one doesn't involve tongues, but a bit of winking... Rachel's learned how to make a gif!!

Christmas Prepurrations

Hooray! We've got our Christmas collars at last, yay yay yay!!

I've got a super cool pink snowflakes one, and Lila has a merry Christmas one. We did have our eyes on the Snowman and Reindeer collars, but they sold out! Boo!

It's not only us getting decorated for Christmas - Rachel has at last had some time away from the sewing machine to put some lights up:

Hm, these aren't energy saving. Won't somebody please think of the electricity bill?!

We don't have a giant tree in the house this year, which is a shame, as I had lots of fun with it last year. But there are still quite a few of the fun dangly round things to bat around the floor, although I was a bit wary of this Christmas pudding one...

Does anyone actually like Christmas pudding?

And last but most DEFINITELY not least, our stockings are up!! omg, they've even got our names on!! We're trying to think of what we'd like to find in them from Santa Claws on Christmas morning... I'm thinking,  a new mouse toy to play with, some more of the catnip drops from the Advent calendar, and a new scratching post, as ours is looking decidedly wonky. Lila wants a copy of The Economist Review of the Year and an iPad. I think I've got a better chance of getting my wishes, if I'm honest...

I'm sooooo excited!!!!! Are you?!

Helping (Part III)

Well, Rachel is still very busy - I don't think she's EVER gone so long without helping us blog! She's so busy that we haven't even got our Christmas collars yet. We're trying not to be annoying about it, but when we see all the collars being sent out to other cats, we do get a bit jealous! Already some of the ones that we liked the look of have sold out. Oh well, at least we've got an advent calendar!

Mia, that's CHEATING!!

So anyway, after Mia saw how good I was at being kind and supportive to Rachel the other week, she thought she would try a bit better to be a help rather than a hindrance. She was looking out for the perfect opportunity, and it finally came at the weekend when Rachel had been hunched over the sewing machine all day. She said she was so achey and sore and all she really wanted was for someone to run a bath for her so she could have a lovely soak.

Mia's eyes went all big and she said to me - now's my chance to be helpful! I wasn't sure how exactly she would accomplish this, seeing as she doesn't have any thumbs to turn the taps on, but she was insistent that she'd be really good at running the bath. Off she went, and sure enough, there came a noise from the bathroom. First I thought it was the pipes... but then realised it was something else. Rachel and Pete came to see what all the noise was and this is what we found.  Mia running the bath...

Look Before You Leap

Oopsy daisy! I was up in Rachel and Pete's bedroom and I decided to go sit in the laundry basket on the soft (and slightly smelly...) clothes. It's a great place to sit and sleep while pretending to be thinking DEEPLY. As usual I jumped in off the bed but...

Oh no! There was nothing in there!! I went straight to the bottom, whoops, there wasn't even a pair of Pete's pants in there to break the fall ... What on earth possessed the humans to be quite so organised, it's very out of character for them. I hope they are feeling OK.

Now this may seem embarrassing - but it could have been worse - Lila nearly did the same thing ON THE COMPOST BIN the other day! She uses it as a way to get up onto the shed, and didn't notice that Rachel was doing some gardening and so had left the lid off. She teetered on the edge for a while, but just managed not to land in the potato peelings and rotten tomatoes... now that WOULD be humiliating!

Lounging

Well hello strangers... today's blog post is mostly instructional - we are going to be giving you some top tips on successful lounging, as we've been doing a lot of this recently...

Lounging is not just sleeping - although it does obviously include it - it's an umbrella term which also incorporates dozing, resting, loafing, sprawling and chillaxing. Here Lila's showing the rarely seen "twist" move - back legs pointing to 12 o'clock; front to 3.

You may notice that she's stretched across most of the armchair - this is a high risk strategy. If you have a couple of real softies for owners like we do, you'll be left with the whole chair as your humans squish up elsewhere. However if your buddies are more pragmatic, you'll be turfed off entirely and left in a worse situation than if you'd just squeezed along the arm to start with.

Now which location is best for lounging? You may automatically assume it's a sofa, but that's not necessarily the case - as we've just heard, there's the chance of being usurped mid-nap, and you may start falling down one of the numerous cracks between cushions. A carpeted floor is an excellent alternative, especially if it's been freshly vacuumed...

Here Mia's napping on her back. This can surprise people when they see a cat sleeping this way for the first time, but be reassured, it's very comfortable. It can look a bit exhibitionist though, especially if your fur is a little sparse around the nipples, Lila...

If you do decide to lounge on the sofa, and someone joins you, don't worry. They can usually be used to enhance your relaxation in some creative way, as Mia illustrates here.

Alternatively they may just want to join you in a catnap.

Unfortunately like all good things, a long lounging session must come end at some point. The only way to finish up, if you want to really be awake and alert for your next spell of relaxation, is a

GREAT

BIG

YAWN!!

Enjoy your lounging, kitties!! If you've got any questions about how to make the most of your downtime, just ask us in the comments. We're always happy to help fellow felines!

The Tunnel

Hey look at our new toy!! Rachel went to a big pet show and bought it for us. Pete rolled his eyes and said it would take up the whole room... but who cares what he thinks, we rule the roost around here!

We weren't actually that impressed with it to start with, but then Rachel undid the buttons and it popped out and OMG it was an ENORMOUS TUNNEL and made a FABULOUS CRINKLY SOUND! And it had HOLES in it to jump through and DANGLY things to bite and play with. I got so very over excited about it... my eyes went very big and round and eventually it had to be put away :-( But before it got put away we had so much fun, well I had lots of fun and even Lila had a peek inside. Which surprised me, as you'll see in this video...

Cat Lookalike Part III

I've got another lookalike for you! I had read the Financial Times cover to cover last Friday morning; and was looking for something else to peruse. I would usually go straight onto the Times, but what with all the phone-hacking shenanigans I'm currently reviewing my daily reading material, and haven't yet found a replacement for the News International titles.

So instead I picked up a Metro - it's a free paper - and after leafing through the latest B-list celebrity gossip, what did I see staring back at me on page 17? Mia!!

Oh no, wait, it's a baby Slender Loris, waiting for a health check at London Zoo. Cute! Looks just like our Mia with its big round eyes and stripey nose. I wonder if the zoo would be interested in taking our naughty tortie as a temporary exhibit?!

Oh I'm only joking, don't worry. What would we do without her around the house? Things would be pretty boring I tell you!

Box III

It's been a while since we've had a Box to play with. This latest one came with a new move-cat-hair-around-the-floor machine; although as an aside, we were very disappointed to see that this machine is more of an actually-sucks-hair-up-quite-effectively machine, which is a bit rubbish. We shall obviously have to double our rolling on the floor efforts to ensure the carpet is always adequately coated with fur.

Anyway ... so this Box appeared in the lounge, and it's really an excellent box. It's just the right size for ONE cat to sleep in.

Mia, it's PLENTY big enough for one cat. There's no need to be so overdramatic!

There are these handy holes to poke the sleeping cat through, if you happen to be the cat NOT sleeping in the box.

They're good for peeping through too.

There's a flippy lid which you can crawl under, or dash through. You can also get a human to shut the lid on you, and then wait for a while and then BURST out of it at an opportune moment when the other human walks past. That's great fun!

And also quite tasty! Nothing like a bit of extra roughage in the diet. Nom nom.

So all in all, this is a great box. Probably the best of the three featured so far on our blog; although the really huge box back in February was fun, its size meant we didn't get to play with it for long. This box has already been around a couple of weeks and shows no sign of going anywhere yet. Hooray!

Evil Whisker!

Beloved blog readers, you've known us for a little while now, haven't you; you've seen lots of photos of us, and read lots of stories about us, especially cute little Mia. You think you know us well, don't you. You think I'm the only cat here with the cunning and brain power to plan mischief and naughty deeds. You don't think there could possibly be anything bad about sweet, roly-poly, adorable Mia. But you'd be wrong in thinking that, my friends. Because she has an EVIL WHISKER!!! How do we know it's evil? It points the opposite way to all her other whiskers, that's how we know (duh!).

I'm not sure if she is going to take advantage of this while it lasts, perhaps she could take a part as a James Bond baddie in the next film?

Humph, I thought I was cast in the role of villian around here. Maybe she's going to become a little chav cat instead. Look at her flipping the (rather furry) bird here! How rude!

Actually I think the whisker's malevolent force has already permeated her brain - I caught her the other day trying to bump off Rachel and Pete by tripping them down the stairs! Look how she's managed to sit on the one step that you can't really see from around the corner on the landing, and how she's spread out so there's barely a spare inch to tread on.

And lets zoom in here. Look at the whisker! You can almost see it vibrating, and glowing, with the evilness of her deed!

Luckily I managed to chase her away before anyone was hurt... this time! Ooh it makes all the fur along my spine stand up on end, I'm going to have to watch my back. Hopefully it'll fall out soon and then she'll go back to being the lovely sweet clumsy overgrown kitten we all know and love, and I can reclaim my rightful role as Chief of Mischief of this household.

Mog's Togs: By Governmental Appointment

STOP THE PRESSES!  It's time for a blog-flash!

Do you remember back in February we sent Larry the new Downing Street cat a couple of collars as a "welcome to your new home" gift?  And got a thank you letter from the Prime Minister's office?  Well we thought that was the last of the matter, but Rachel did always wonder whether he had ever worn either of the collars.  And now, we know!

Last night Rachel found some press photos of Larry sporting a very fetching Union Jack bowtie in honour of the Royal Wedding (we think it's made from a paper napkin - how environmentally friendly of him!).  She figured it must have been attached to a collar, and eventually found this photo on a news blog, clearly showing that he's wearing his blue argyle pattern Mog's Togs collar!!

There are some more photos here.  Doesn't he look handsome in his collar!  We're all a-flutter at these photos; Rachel is unbelievably excited.  Even Pete couldn't hide how impressed he was!

P.S. Last week, newspapers here in the UK reported that Larry - brought in to rid the Prime Ministerial residence of rodents - caught his first mouse at last.  Perhaps his new collar gave him a confidence boost!

Celebri-kitties!

I can't remember whether we told you at the time, but back in February we were interviewed by Your Cat magazine, for a feature they were writing about blogging cats.  It was ever so exciting; well, Rachel and Mia were very excited; Pete and I feigned indifference.  We had nearly forgotten about it - but now the issue is out!  Look how excited Mia is to see the magazine!

We're FAMOUS!  I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before people are asking for our pawprints in the street.  We'll have to get disguises if we want to go out in public. We've already started thinking about it; I'm going to go demure and classy - I'll fit right in here in Surrey with a twinset and pearls.  Mia is going more for the "hide in plain sight" approach, *sigh*.

So anyway it's all very exciting.  We've scanned in the article so you can read it below (you can click on it to zoom).  I'm a bit disappointed with the photo of me, to be honest, I must speak to my agent about that.  It wasn't just us featured in the article - we're very happy to have met some new friends on the other blogs mentioned - you should go say hi to them too!  We were already big fans of Freya and Teego, and now we are adding Allotment Cats, Millou and the Feline Network to our Google Reader!

Sunny Days Of Spring

Thought we had better get this post out before the sunny weather disappears!  We had a lovely girls-only weekend as Pete was away hitting a very small ball with a stick. It was so lovely and warm - actually we found the heat a bit of a shock and stayed inside, lounging on the cool tiles in the bathroom.

Rachel seemed to like it though, she put her shorts on and showed us her white legs (heehee) and then spent a lot of time putting more dirt into pots (we still don't understand this).  We meowed plaintively from the back door to try and make her come back inside so that Lila could sit on her and I could have my tummy tickled, but it didn't work, she was having too much fun out there.  So in the afternoon when it had cooled down a little and there was a bit more shade, we ventured out.

I found a great place to sit, amongst the wallflowers and daffodils. I discovered that if you find a big enough clump of daffodils, you can kind of lean your head gently on the stems without them breaking.  We found out the hard way that you aren't meant to break flower stems, we did that the other week when racing down the garden and got a bit of a telling off.  Whoops.  Anyway from this vantage point I was nicely shaded, but the soil was warm and dry, and best bit - I could jump out at Rachel and Lila as they walked down the path.  Yay!

Lila found a nice sunny patch and rolled around in it.  She got her bumblebee collar absolutely filthy!

Then she checked out the little baby plants in this funny box thing.  Hang on, these were just pots of dirt last week?!  Aha, perhaps I am getting closer to understanding the whole dirt-in-pots thing now...

The box thing isn't looking quite as smart now; since on Sunday morning before Rachel got up, Lila jumped off the fence onto it and broke it!!  Rachel was really cross and said some sweary words while she was fixing it.  Heehee.  Lila thought she'd got away with it but the dusty pawprints showed one of us was the culprit, and I'm too scared to go up on the fence, so Rachel knew it was her!