Happy Wednesday Furiends!
‘Hope all is fine in your neck of the woods. Some of our nearby fires are contained and some are up to 50% contained and that is great news! We are thankful for all those brave folks who go into danger to save our forests and homes!

It’s been a bit cooler lately and this has allowed Oliver and I to enjoy our new fuzzy beds.

And just in case The Human didn’t get the memo that The Tribe is done with the hot weather, I dug a little something out of the toy box.

And, we decided we’d take the opportunity of Book Lovers Day to do some shameless self-promotion!

Lily wasn’t feeling photogenic this week so it’s time to get on with the newest feline news.

Klepto Kitty ‘Collects’ Nearly A Thousand Items From Her Neighborhood

There is a feline in Southern California who has stolen close to 1,000 items in the last two years. Meowza!

Juno, the Klepto Cat has been purrusing her neighborhood in Carpinteria taking everything from gloves (almost 180)  to socks to t-shirts.

Juno’s human, Connie Geston said, “In 2019, I started noticing things in my backyard. A ball, a glove. I was thinking the kids next door were throwing things over the fence.” So, I was throwing them back over. But I would find those things back in the backyard. I kept thinking it was the kids… the kids, and I never thought it was the cat.” That is until the day she caught Juno dragging a pair of infant leggings into the house.

Since her thievery is so prolific, Juno now has a place where her ill-gotten gains are stored. It’s a little tent with wire racks that display all the booty she’s collected.

Juno has now reached celebrity status. She has her own Instagram account and she even ran for mayor of Carpinteria. One of Juno’s latest projects with her owner is to take some of the recycled items and use them for an entry in an upcoming Carpinteria Art Center Art Show.

Music, an affinity for cats honor a wife’s love of felines and strikes the purrfect cord

Thomas and Brenda Groth had two passions, music and cats. Thomas’ late wife Brenda took in a lot of abandoned cats over the years.  They even added a cat room to their home that contains a spiral staircase and “condos” for the felines.

Now, this Ohio couple’s love of cats has turned into the Brenda S. Groth Senior Feline Living Community at the Animal Welfare League of Trunbull County.

The brick feline living community at the AWL has two 216-square-foot rooms that can hold up to 12 cats each. There are perches that provide window access, ramped walkways, feeding areas and square boxes with bedding. Also included are toys, scratching posts and cat trees, noted Lori Shandor, the Animal Welfare League’s chief executive officer.

Groth said a driving force behind creating this two-room space was to ensure older cats had a place to live a quality life, as well as to have a fitting tribute to his wife’s memory.

“Brenda was relentless about giving cats a good life,” he said.

Providing the musical entertainment was the Bravura Woodwind Quintet, which played the famous Louis Armstrong hit “What a Wonderful World,” one of Brenda Groth’s favorite songs.

Cats Love Agility Training?

When Beth Deal told her husband, Pete, she wanted to bring their two 6-month-old Ocicat kittens to an agility competition, he had no clue what he was getting into. Now, six years, multiple trips across the country and many national awards later Beth and Pete and their Ocicats are top contenders in cat agility competitions.

Feline agility is not just for cats with pedigrees, it’s for every feline and many shelters are now putting cats through their agility paces.

Feline agility is much like canine agility. Cats are timed while running counterclockwise through a 20-by-20-foot course, enclosed with vision-obscuring netting. There are 10 different obstacles on the course, starting with a small platform with three steps up and three down, followed by nine other hurdles that gradually become more challenging.

After the feline competitor successfully makes it through a six-inch jump, there’s a 10-inch jump, as well as tunnels, hoops and weave poles set out in a straight line that cats must bend and weave around.

The cats have 4 minutes, 30 seconds to complete the course — dogs usually get about 60 seconds — which starts the second a paw hits the stairs and stops when it reaches the floor after the final hoop jump. Most cats can do it in 30 seconds or less, with faster felines ringing in at under 20. Rascal has completed his course as fast as 12 seconds and Boo, another of the Deals’ ocicats, once made a 7.62-second run.

The furry contestants are allowed to correct mistakes. “They may stop to chase a bug between the first and second obstacles,” says Jill Archibald, 71, feline agility chair for the Cat Fanciers’ Association. “They can go back to where they went off course and continue the obstacle.”

Trainers and handlers at these competitions work off cats’ natural prey-hunting instincts by using a lure (that is, a high-value toy) to entice the cat through the obstacle course.

Now if your humans want to get you on the agility bandwagon, make sure they start slowly and take small steps. Dragging a favorite toy across a stack of books or a chair is a great beginning.

Agility training is also good for felines that take to it and can negate all kinds of bad behavior.  So my furiends, let your humans to get out the clickers and let the training begin!

Nova Scotia Woman Creates Clothes for Sphynx Cats

Oh my whiskers, do we really have to talk about feline fashion again this week?!  I guess I can make an exception for Kristen Janssen who noticed a gap in the market when it came to stylish cat clothes for Sphynx cats. These hairless kitties often wear clothing to keep themselves warm.

Janssen, a Sphynx breeder started making clothes for the kittens she would adopt out. People would ask for more clothing and that’s  how her business was born.

She now has a store on Etsy and also has some items in local stores.

The line has four designs, t-shirts, long sleeves, four-legged pajamas, and hoodies. Soon  bathrobes and dresses will be added to the collection.

Twenty best quotes about cats in honor of International Cat Day

Needless to say this is a holiday every feline can get behind (although, if truth be told, EVERY day is cat day!). I thought that giving you some fantastic cat quotes would be a great way to celebrate. Which one is your favorite? The Human likes the one from Robertson Davies.

 “There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.” – Albert Schweitzer

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.” -James Herriot

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.” -Charles Dickens

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” -Garrison Keillor

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.” -Mark Twain

 “A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” -Ernest Hemingway

“I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.” – Neil Gaiman

“Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.” -Neil Gaiman

“Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.” – Mark Twain

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.” -Eckhart Tolle

“Time spent with a cat is never wasted.” – Colette

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” -Jean Cocteau

“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.” -Robertson Davies

“The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal – or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.” -Elizabeth Peters

“There are no ordinary cats.” -Colette

“I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”-Hippolyte A. Taine

“I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.” -Jules Verne

“I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.” – L.M. Montgomery

“Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.” – Pam Brown

“What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?” – Henry David Thoreau

Aaaaaaand a follow up from last week.

Some of you commented last week about my feature about the cat tour in Minneapolis that you would have liked to have seen more cats and less humans so I sent my Purrsonal Assistant out on the web to find a video of the tour itself. Here you go!