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!

Evil Whisker No More

STOP THE PRESSES! Lila here - with some BREAKING NEWS! Remember a couple of months ago I exclusively broke the news of Mia's Evil Whisker? Well, today I can bring you a major update on this story. At some point between 11pm last night and 8am this morning, the Evil Whisker DISAPPEARED. Rachel and Pete had been marvelling yesterday evening at how long it had got, and then this morning - it's nowhere to be seen.

Mia is back to her 100% good, innocent self again! And best of all, her current whiskers look to all be pointing straight and true, so hopefully the reign of terror is over for now.

The Evil Whisker did have one last feeble attempt at an evil deed before it fell out though - it made Mia do a tiny little poo on the living room carpet overnight. The horror!!

PS Did you think there'd be a photo of the poo? You did, didn't you...

PPS Just so you know, NONE of our breaking news stories come from private detectives or phone hacking. But we do utilise listening at closed doors and sitting on laps pretending to be asleep while phone or Skype conversations are happening. We don't miss ANYTHING.

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!

Lovely Lila

Hey there, remember me?! Your friendly, slightly cynical, blogging black cat? It's not just Mia who lives around here you know. But it does seem that pretty much every blog post recently has been about the little tortie. Yes I know she's cute, and photogenic, but there are lots of nice shots of me around too!! Plus, I've been a bit depressed this week, I don't know why, I've just been moping about a little. But now I'm back to my normal self, hooray, so it's time to redress the balance and have a Lila-centric post!

Here I am curled up on Rachel's lap. I'm really good at cuddling, much better than Mia, who's easily distracted and will give an unsuspecting human a kick in the gut as she bounces off to investigate whatever's caught her interest.

My next favourite thing to do is squirming around on the floor, showing my belly. It isn't quite as floofy as Mia's though, and you WILL lose your fingers if you tickle my tummy; although I very occasionally let Rachel & Pete have a gentle stomach stroke.

Here I'm sitting on the bedroom windowsill, thinking about things. I'm often to be found by windows, trying to work out if there's any way out. I have jumped out of this window recently, I skidded off the bay window roof below and landed on the car. Gave Rachel quite a shock, I tell you...

Ahh, enjoying the garden. I love it out there and wish we were allowed outside all the time, not just in the day. This particular flower is my greatest foe, my sworn enemy. Oh wait, I mean my sworn anemone.

So there you go, some nice photos of me and I hope you've got to know me better. I'm not all sarky comments and put downs you know!

HEY, who put that one in?! Good job I'm feeling happy again...  grrr...