Happy Birthday Sammie

Sammie is two years old today and as is tradition, is being spoilt rotten.

We had a small tower in the bedroom, but it was a cheap and cheerful thing from Lidl and just wore out. The cats got a lot of use from it though so it wasn’t by any means a waste of money.

We’ve replaced it with this, and called it Sammie’s present due to the timing.

It sits nicely in the cats’ corner upstairs. It’s a Diogenes scratching barrel XL and it came from Zooplus. There was a different one that looked good but the reviews were better for this one as the two lower dens are connected for more fun. It seems very sturdy and so far, Sammie seems to be enjoying it.

She’s got a bag of Dreamies that came with one of those balls that they have to play with to get the treats out. That was a present from Pets at Home. I love that they give your pets a gift for their birthdays. Sammie loves her Dreamies so she’ll really appreciate that.

She’ll get a special birthday dinner later of a Sheba dome and I gave her a tin of tuna with shrimp for her breakfast. She really enjoyed that.

She’s such a sleek, agile cat now that it’s hard to picture her as a kitten. She was so tiny and fragile compared to how she is now, although she still looks tiny compared to Frodo.

Here’s a wee gallery of some of her pics over the past two years.

3 months old

Playing in her new tunnel

Helping with the groceries

Such a pretty face

Almost four months old

Double trouble

Still loving that tunnel

Five months old

Little munchkin

Eight months old

Ten months old

Almost one year old

Tired out

Two years old

 

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Rosie

We’ll be popping over to Tamworth at the weekend and will be bringing Rosie home with us. I’m so excited and can’t wait to see her again. We’re all ready for her and have everything she’ll need. I’ve cleared the bottom shelves of one of the bookcases to make space for some of her stuff.

Frodo and Sammie helped.

We’ve bought some of the food that Rosie is used to and have also bought her a few new toys. I know we have plenty of toys for the kitties, but I thought she should have some of her own. Also, I can’t resist buying stuff when we go to Pets at Home.

Sammie was very impressed by the stash and offered to keep an eye on it.

Since the photos were taken, an extra shelf was cleared for toys and treats.

I also wanted to make her a quilt as I did one for the other two cats, but I’ve had a few problems with that, so decided to crochet her a blanket for now and do the quilt later. I thought the blanket would be nice for her to snuggle into on the way home.

I loved doing the Waffle stitch for one of the squares in the CAL, and thought it’d make a lovely snuggly blanket. I had some soft chunky yarn in my stash that was perfect.

Frodo was quite interested in it while I was taking a photo, but then he’s fascinated by anything that I do and loves to help.

This is a close up of the waffle stitch so you can see how lovely and textured it is, which makes it really squishy.

I’m sure there’ll be more photos once Rosie is here. Many more photos…

A new sofa

We were in Costco a couple of weeks ago and spotted some lovely sofas for pets. They looked so comfy with plump, plush cushions so we bought one. We thought it’d be perfect for the cats, especially as it’s big enough for when Frodo is fully grown. We’re constantly on the lookout for oversized pet things 🙂

For now though, Sammie seems to like it best although she won’t sit on the fluffy cushion part and lounges on the back of it.

We’re not sure if that’s because it gets her closer to the radiator or because she prefers the texture of the back.

She’s definitely been making herself comfortable on it though so we’re hopeful that they’ll both use it once they get a bit more used to it.

Our little gymnast

Sammie has always been lively and active, and from an early age was leaping all over the house. Until recently though, she hadn’t managed to get on top of the one wall of bookcases as there wasn’t anything that she could use as a starting point, unlike the other bookcases which have their cat tree close by.

Stephen has recently moved one of the sofas round so that it’s a bit closer and she’s been sitting on the back of it looking up at the bookcases. Finally she just went for it and got up there in one go.

It was still a big leap but she’s so agile that she even made the jump back down onto the sofa without needing to think about it first.

While she was up there, she found the abandoned advent calendars. We’d bought them one each but they turned their noses up at the treats in there so we put them on the top of the bookcase and forgot about them.

Sammie had a little chew of one of them and seemed to be trying to open the doors to get the treats out.

She then pushed one of them onto the floor. She seemed to find that quite amusing.

 

Frodo and Sam playing rollerball

The large rollerball toy has been upstairs for a while but the other day we swapped it over with the smaller one to give the cats a change. We’ve put it on the new rug and Frodo loves it even more than he did before. He plays with it for ages, diving at it, lying on it and really throwing that ball round the circuit.

I managed to catch both cats playing with it a few days ago, and it was as if they were batting the ball back and forth to each other for a while. I love to see them playing, especially when they’re playing nicely together.

My reading buddy

On my days off from work, I sometimes like to read in bed for an hour or two before getting up. Sammie loves that and usually comes for a cuddle.

After she’s had enough fuss, she settles down either on my legs or snuggled up to them, and has a nap. It’s sometimes hard to concentrate on the book while she’s being so cute though.

She was really happy while I’ve been off work with the flu. I stayed in bed and alternately napped and read, and Sammie thought it was her birthday. She stayed with me pretty much all day and night. Frodo visited on and off during the day, and stayed with me during the night, but Sammie really made the most of it. I think she’s a bit disappointed that I’m feeling better now…

They’ve been at it again

They don’t often snuggle up together in the doughnut beds now, but when they do, it’s really cute.

The Hop Inn

When we went to the pet show at the NEC, we bought a few of the cats’ Christmas presents. One of the gifts that we were tempted by was something called the Hop Inn. I think it was originally made for bunnies but it’s also the perfect size for cats so is now marketed for all sorts of pets. It comes in a range of colours but we liked the purple. We bought a cube plus one of the three-way tunnels, which just slots into the cube to make one piece. You can extend it indefinitely, limited only by your wallet and the size of your house.

We helped the cats to unwrap the two parts, popped them open and put them together. The cats were straight in there.

They definitely like them as not only have they both been running in and out of it, but they’ve also slept in there.

Frodo likes to curl up inside the cube so he can keep an eye on what’s going on elsewhere.

Sammie likes the cube, but she goes right into the middle to sleep and curls up tightly where I can’t take her photo.

They’ve played chase through the tunnels and sardines in the cube and generally seem happy with it. How long we’ll leave it assembled in the living room though is a different matter. It does take up quite a lot of space. Once the room goes back to normal after Christmas, we’ll see if we can fit it in anywhere for a bit longer.

I think Frodo would like that.

Frodo’s first Christmas

Frodo is really enjoying his first Christmas. The cats have had lots of presents, some of which Frodo opened early when he nicked them from under the tree. He really loves tearing paper! One of the presents, which was in the tree rather than under it, contained a squeaky mouse. He discovered that earlier today and had terrific fun opening it.

He even took it over to one of his earlier presents, a wibbly, wobbly tree, and tried to get the paper off it over there too.

I had to help him a little in the end, but he had a lot of fun with it, and again once I’d got it out of the paper for him.

They’ve had tinned tuna for their Christmas dinner, which they definitely enjoyed. They’re both fast asleep now, after an exciting day. More presents for them tomorrow as we thought it’d be more fun to spread them out a bit.