Happy Almost Christmas Wednesday My Furiends!

Still no new snow in our neck of the woods but The Human keeps reminding us that she chose to move to the Inland Northwest to avoid draconian amounts of snow like she experienced when she lived in the Rockies. Since we’re inside kitties it doesn’t make any difference to us. As a matter of fact, when it’s not snowy and only rainy, that’s a great time for The Human to take us for a neighborhood tour in the cat stroller but, unfortunately, one of the wheels is broken and The Human is still trying to figure out how to fix it.

Whenever we get a Chewy box it’s a red letter day and this week we had a very good day. Lily was appointed box opening snoopervisor and she took her job seriously.

And once The Human got all the items out of the box, imagine our surprise when we saw a new scratcher! The Human slathered it with catnip and turned us loose. Oliver and I were the first to inspect this new item.

You may have noticed that the new scratcher is a bit, err…small and might not accommodate all our pulchritude but we still gave it our best effort and Oliver decided to prove the old “If it fits I sits” cat quote.

On another note, my brother has been play fighting with me and demolishing the whiskers on the right side of my face. As you can see from the photos, this mars my handsome countenance and makes me feel a little off balance.

That’s it for our neck of the woods for this week. I hope you enjoy this week’s feline news.

  What do rice and cats have in common?

I’ve heard of unusual ways that people celebrate their love of us fantastic felines but this one is really cool!

There is a rice farmer in Thailand who creates beautiful pictures of cats in his rice fields.

Rice is one of the largest income producing products in Thailand and now the rice fields are becoming tourist attractions as well.

Cats play fetch, too — as long as they’re in control, a study finds

I don’t know how many of my feline furiends ever play or have played fetch (all three of us did this as kittens but we’re over it now), you might be interested in this.

Doggos aren’t the only ones who fetch as a recent studyin the journal Scientific Reports has found. We felines play fetch too, but we have our own rules.  

Academics at the University of Sussex and Northumbria University in Great Britain surveyed almost 1,000 owners of 1,154 cats to find out if – and why – they fetch, which was defined as an animal retrieving an object that’s thrown.

Their study found that nearly 95% of the cat owners reported that their cats fetched itemsinstinctively, and they were not trained to do so.

They found that we felines fetch when we want to play fetch and not when the human decides we should play.

“So it can say a bit about cats being in control of their interactions and being in control of their environments, [or] being in control of us, you might even go so far to say,” says Jemma Forman, a doctoral researcher at the University of Sussex and co-author of the study.

They believe that our motivation to play fetch is different than the doggos too. We like to play with objects that remind us of prey. It’s not a social interaction like it is for our canine furiends.

No matter the motive for cats to play fetch, play is good for us!

Human spends over £1,000 ($1265.00USD) on a birthday party for her cats

Clearly our Human needs to step up her game! A human named Sam, shared details of the extravagant feline birthday party on her TikTok channel, @jet_set_gypsea.

I like the caption on the video that says: “Yes she’s a little spoiled but I think she deserves it! Princess treatment for our little princess girls!”

Sam celebrated both her cat’s birthdays together. Both felines received commissioned art work of each cat, although Sam admitted that this was more of a gift for her thaqn the cats.

Sam shopped at her favorite pet shop for birthday gifts. After the cats were done playing with their new toys, they ate their birthday meal from Dolce and Gabbana pet plates. We sent the Purrsonal Assistant on an internet search to find the plates to get an idea of the cost. Although she couldn’t find the exact plates, it looks like two Dolce and Gabbana plates run from $315.00 and up.

And what did the birthday girls eat from those plates? The starter was scallop and shrimp with a main course of “cheesy rabbit”.

Invitations to the party were sent to all of the feline’s furiends with the note that gifts were obligatory which meant they received lots of presents including many cat shaped items.

This feline thinks Sam just set the bar for feline birthday parties. Step up your game humans!

Some kitties love snow

Some of us are not fond of the white, wet stuff but then others of us enjoy some snowy play time. This cat’s human was even throwing snowballs for the cat to fetch. (And if you want to learn more about cats and fetching read the article above).

You go kitty and I’ll sit by the fire and watch your snowy video.