Aby-a-Day – 17 Februari: “A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope” (Silly Singapura Sunday)

About a month ago, Kate over at Hauspanther made a post about Patti Haskins’ amazing catnip snakes.

Well, they did look pretty awesome, and since both Jacoby and Alfred like to lick and roll on catnip toys, so, even though they were a bit expensive (especially considering the postage)…but they truly did look awesome, so I got one for Freddy and one for Jake. The snakes arrived after Freddy’s birthday, so I gave one snake to everybody whilst holding one back for Jake’s birthday in April.

I took the one out and gave it – I thought – to Jake and Freddy to go nuts on.

I was…surprised, to say the least.

Contrary to any of my expectations, Izaak was the one to attack and dominate the catnip snake.

Zak has never (before) shown any interest in catnip the way Jake and Freddy do.

I was amazed at how fiercely Zak attacked the catnip snake.

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In retrospect, I guess I should have made a video of Zak and the snake. But what’s even stranger is, since that first day, he has entirely ignored the snake in favour of his mousies. What a funny little cat!

Aby-a-Day – 21 May: Playmobil Purrfect Stay Cat Boarding (Miniature Monday)

I know Playmobil has kind of “Poor man’s Lego reputation, but they have got a lot more choices in the cat department. Playmobil Purrfect Stay Cat Boarding set.

Not gonna lie; overall, I prefer Legos. But Playmobil has some interesting pieces, and I have been known to mix Legos and Playmobil pieces in the quest for the perfect Strollercat action figure.

It kind of started when Björn bought me the Playmobil Woman with Cat Family set as a surprise. After that, I dragged out all my other cat pieces and scoured eBay for more.

Then we saw this ad for a contest in Kattliv where the prize was this set. Well, I needed that shiny device! So we found one in a toy store.

Alfred was eager to help me build it.

It’s actually a pretty cool set.

Hauspanther would be proud of all the catification going on up in here. And the detail is fun, too. There are stickers to put on little cans of cat food as labels and a sticker for the litter box that looks like (clean, unused) litter!

Only one problem: not enough kitties! So I added all the random Playmobil cats I had collected and added them in.

Like this small cat tree (with carpet stickers for the shelves).

And these two iterations of Strollercats. The little grey one is, of course, Lorelai.

This one is my absolute favourite, though. Somewhere along the line I picked up a veterinary set which included this patient, complete with Cone of Shame.

But the best part is, she even has stitches! I’m not sure which set this goes with; I must have gotten it as a random cat piece on eBay. I can find the cat with stitches as a part of this set, but she hasn’t got the cone or the bed.

Here’s the house again with the extra cats added in. Much better.

Oh, wait! Here, let’s add two more cats…

Suddenly, the poor cat boarding house was attacked by Roryzilla!

She’s already using her grabby Aby hands to pick things up, as you can see.

Oh well. At least Freddy didn’t sit on it…

Aby-a-Day – November 9: Do you canoe? (Hipstamatic Monday)

At the cat show this weekend, there was a vendor selling Cat Balls and Cat Canoes, and I couldn’t resist picking one up for Jacoby.

Of course, I’ve seen the Balls and Canoes all over the internet on sites like Hauspanther, but this is the first time I got to see and handle them in person.

Although, truth be told…I really fell in love with the fabric print inside. It’s a marvelous retro atomic city print by Riley Blake and I wish I could find it online. I tried everything…if I can’t find something, it’s hard to find!

As you can see, it’s a pretty awesome bed. Jake got into his instantly.

In fact, I actually had a bit of trouble getting him out of it to go up to the rings!

“Nope. Don’t wanna.”

But seriously…awesome bed.

Aby-a-Day – June 22: Colourful tiny cats (Miniature Monday)

At the BlogPaws Cat Style Lounge DIY craft table on Thursday night, I took the Russian Jacoby ball-jointed doll with me just for fun. While I was making fun cat glasses, he was playing with other miniature kittens.

What’s really funny is…on the Hauspanther site, among the collection of photos from BlogPaws, you can see my arms, one leg, and my camera at the craft table! Wow…I’m…tangentially famous!

Aby-a-Day – May 29: Coco the Couture Cat (Fashion Friday)

Okay, Coco isn’t an Aby…but she is a fashion icon!

At BlogPaws, I had the pleasure of meeting Coco the Couture Cat and her human!

Isn’t her gold pillbox hat just gorgeous?

Coco had several wardrobe changes throughout the day. This is her pink Hello Kitty Rockabilly dress.

Coco is a torbie Cornish Rex. I’ve petted Devon and Selkirk Rexes, but I’ve never got to pet a Cornish Rex before.

Coco’s human took her out of her stroller to show off her dress, but she jumped right back into her stroller the first chance she got.

That made me miss Jacoby all the more! He does the same thing! I would have brought his small stroller with us had he been able to join me, and I would have brought a collection of his outfits, too.

Just like Jake, Coco sees her stroller as her “safe space,” her mobile territory, and she’s perfectly happy in it no matter what is going on around her.

Of course, Jake’s outfits aren’t nearly as fancy as Coco’s…but then, she’s a girl.

I know a lady doesn’t tell her age, but Coco will be 10 years old in September!

So much for the school of thought that believes that as cats age, they stop wanting to go out and do things, eh?

I mean, Coco’s almost 10 and she’s still dressing like a Vegas showgirl!

I so wish Jake could have met her. They would have made quite the well-dressed couple

Speaking of my Jakeman, here is his flat self sporting the fancy glasses I made at the Hauspanther DIY craft table last night! You know he would have been at the table helping me design them…and he’d have worn them, too!

Aby-a-Day – November 2: Urine luck (Serious Sunday)

This week, Jacoby has had another urinary tract infection flare-up.

It started with him trying to pee in first one litter box, then the other…and then the first one again. Lather, rinse, repeat. So on Thursday morning, while he was trying to pee again, I slipped a little dish under his bum to collect a urine sample. And…it wasn’t yellow, like it’s supposed to be. It was pink. And I’m sure you know what pink urine means: blood. (When you have a cat with UTI issues, it helps to have a very bonded relationship; obviously, I couldn’t collect a urine sample myself from most cats, but Jake doesn’t mind if I do something like put a small takeout container under him while he’s trying to pee!)

So I called my boss to tell him I’d be late, called the vet to tell them we were on our way (they don’t open until 9am on Thursdays), and we were off to see the vet.

They took a better urine sample from him (it was still bloody), and gave him his first dose of a new medication.

Of course, he took it perfectly – Jake’s great at taking pills.

The prescription that we were given was for Cerenia, which is mainly used to prevent nausea in dogs and cats, but also has an off-label use as an anti-inflammatory. We’ve never been prescribed this medication before…and I’m not entirely sure it worked. His usual UTI cocktail is Phenoxybenzamine (an antispasmodic which also increases urine flow) and Bruprenex, a pain reliever. After 24 hours on just the Cerenia, it was obvious that he was still in pain…and he was still feeling like he needed to pee when he didn’t. I went back to the vet to get his usual medications…and by the next morning he was back to his old perky self. The Phenoxybenzamine and the Buprenex work that quickly, at least with Jake!

He also got an antibiotic, but that was in the form of an injection rather than pills. He’s had Convenia twice before, the first time to treat his chin acne, and then again the last time he had a UTI in April.

He took that well, too. And by today, Sunday, he’s back to normal – he not finished with his medicine yet, but he’s chasing Angel, knocking stuff over, and climbing up to the top wall shelf. If he was a kid, he’d be going back to school tomorrow.

UTIs, crystals and blockages are serious business. Jake’s never had a blockage, but he does have crystals, and he eats only prescription UT canned and dry food – and mostly the former. He is also the reason we have a drinking fountain for the cats. If you notice the warning signs (trying to pee over and over again and/or peeing in the wrong place when the cat NEVER pees outside the box), do not hesitate. Drop what you’re doing and go to your vet. Not to scare you, but an Aby breeder friend of mine lost a healthy young stud male to a blockage. She had been away, and the pet sitter didn’t know the signs. He looked like he was just asleep when she found him…but he was dead. She had an autopsy done, and he had a urinary blockage. He was only about two years old.

One thing that I am considering getting is Perfect Litter. It changes colour when your cat has a UTI, so you have another warning sign to look for. And as luck would have it, right now, the company is giving away a month’s supply of litter just for the cost of shipping ($4.99) – and they give you a $5 coupon good on your next purchase. Hauspanther posted about this on Thursday, the same day Jake went to the vet – talk about perfect timing!

Aby-a-Day – February 20: Catification chez nous

As most of you know by now, we are moving to a new apartment in our building. It’s exciting, and a lot of work. Our building has an open plan, and when the interiors were first built out, the original buyers (which we were, also, in our current apartment) had options as to how the units were built out. In our case, the optional second bedroom wasn’t built out…but we wanted it, so we’re having it built back in according to the original plans.

Of course, a new apartment affords us a chance to create a haven not only for ourselves, but for the cats as well. While my husband won’t let me go completely crazy the way they did in The Cats’ House or the $35,000 Complete Cat House, or get the German Cat Climbing Furniture, but we are creating something of a Cat Superhighway in our new home.

Originally, there was an open space between the living room and the middle room.

We had that made into a solid wall. And we’re installing two sets of Sophia Cat Shelves alongside the television.

One hasn’t been mounted yet because it has a missing piece, so that’s why there are only three on the wall right now.

Look how high the top one is! Jacoby is going to love this.

The new middle room is going to be my art room, and it will also have a television on the wall (I watch TV while I work instead of listening to music). My original concept was this:

But we decided not to surround the TV with shelves, so instead of the Hemnes piece, we opted for IKEA’s Bestå TV stand. The cool thing about Bestå is that you can arrange pieces on the IKEA website to see how they’ll look.

This is what our setup should look like (I’m not entirely sure about the doors, though).

Then, we’ll add a few Ekby Tryggve shelves and Valter brackets, painted to match the wall.

I painted them all myself on Monday.

And this is what my workroom wall should look like!

This was the concept I had for our bedroom. It was to be custom-built, but that proved too expensive.

I came up with a way of assembling different sizes of Expedit units to create the same staircase effect for a lot less money. The people at IKEA were pretty impressed, actually.

It’s 8 squares by 8 squares, 10 feet by 10 feet. It should work well.

And it should look something like this. I can’t wait to build it and see what Jake thinks!

Because right now, he thinks this is an awesomely high place to sit. He has no idea what’s in store for him in a couple of weeks!

Abys are Everywhere – German felted bed model

I love it when Hauspanther has a post that features an Abyssinian model.

The beds are made by the German company PetInteriors, but never fear: they ship worldwide – and they also feature free shipping to the US and Canada!

And not only do they have an Aby modelling their cat products, but they also have Abyssinian customers. This is Fahari from Gera, Germany enjoying a wall-mounted Rondo basket bed.

Thanks again, Hauspanther!

Abys are Everywhere: Blue is the new Ruddy

Blue Abys are everywhere! As part of our move, we’re buying a new bed, and I’m looking at one on Wayfair.com.

Well, since I signed up for an account with them, I get emails telling me what goodies they have on sale. Like litter box cabinets! I had no idea Wayfair had cat furniture…but they do!

And look at the handsome blue Aby they have modelling this cabinet! We currently have two white cabinets (one in each bathroom), but if we ever want to change colour, I now know where to go.

I was also pleased to discover that they sell the Sophia box-shelves, because we were thinking of getting those…and obviously, they’re Aby-approved!

These shelves come in sets of two, and you can get either black or white. The Aby, sadly, is not included.

Surprisingly, Wayfair carries a lot of the “standard” modern cat furniture, like the Sebastian Modern Cat Tree (look who’s the model again!), the Lotus Cat Tree and the Square Cat Habitat Baobob and Acacia cat trees. They also carry cat shelves like the Refined Feline Clouds shelves and the Square Cat Habitat Buddah Perches. Who knew!?

Since we’re looking to do some catification in the new place, I went over all the blog posts about cat shelves and walkways on Hauspanther and discovered that somehow I’d missed this one from last year! How did I not see this lovely blue Aby Zidane in her San Francisco loft?

I’m seeing a lot more blue Abys in advertising lately…interesting trend!

As seen on Hauspanther: Aby Paradise in San Diego

Earlier this week, Hauspanther shared a marvelously catified loft apartment. It’s a wonder example of what you can do with shelves and catwalks, even in a small space (this apartment is only 650 square feet)!

Of course, Hauspanther posts about catified living spaces all the time…but this time, the cats who get to play with all these fantastic furnishings are Abys! Someday, we’re going to catify our apartment for the cats…

Aby-a-Day – April 26: National Hairball Awareness Day (Fashion Friday)

Today is National Hairball Awareness Day!

And Hauspanther, along with FURminator (the official sponsor of National Hairball Awareness Day, naturally) are here to help you celebrate!

You can download a cat moustache template PDF and create your own cat moustache.

Of course, you know I could not resist this. I printed out the ‘stache backs on cardstock, glued them to a couple of chopsticks and then stuck on some of Jacoby’s and Angel’s FURminations.

Doesn’t Jake look dashing?

Of course, when doesn’t Jake look dashing, right?

Angel was less amused.

She’s a bit of a tomboy; I thought she’d have fun with a moustache for a day.

Guess she’s more of a girl than I gave her credit for.

Don’t forget to check out FURminator’s Moustache Cats Gallery on Facebook, too!