Happy Wednesday My Furiends!
The Tribe is slowly getting back to normal. The Female Human always makes sure she gives us cuddle time (Oliver is a bit more demanding than the rest of us).

Lily is eating better and Oliver and I are trying to keep from chasing her all over the house (the little water squirt bottle that’s sprayed in our faces when The Human catches us treating her like prey has helped as well)

I spend supervised time with Jasmine in her “apartment” in the back of the house. She’ll tolerate Oliver and sadly, still connects Lily with the cat that came with her and bullied Jasmine so Lily is not a visitor. I like to hang out on Jasmine’s cat condo.

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Well, it’s time to bring you my feline stories of the week. Enjoy!

Manner Wear Diapers for Cats

If you follow my Wednesday web wanderings, you already know I feature many news items from Japan. Things like feline ID cards, condos designed for cats and their people, hotels where windows look into a feline playground and lots more. And now, those wonderful folks in Japan have created diapers for cats.

There are many reasons why a kitty might need a diaper, temporarily or permanently; diseases, post-surgery, spraying outside the litterbox,  inconvenience due to age, etc.  This “absorption wear”, as described by  Unicharm, the product creators, were created after lengthy study of the feline body shape.

The high waist is said to help the snug fit along the cat’s body and will not hinder the cat from jumping and move with ease.  Feline grooming and licking will not peel off the wide tape and the area for the tail will accommodate the floofiest of cats.

Each diaper is said to absorb moisture for up to 12 hours, and the absorbent, breathable sheet inside is made with ultra-fine silk-like fibers that are soft for kitty’s fur. There is no price noted at this time for the Manner Wear diapers. They will be released on the Japanese market on March 9^th.

Japan Has a Real Estate Agency That Specializes in Cat Friendly Properties

And here is more fantastic feline news from Japan. If you will be sharing your new home or apartment with a feline in Japan, call Necorepa Real Estate, Japan’s very first real estate agency that exclusively works with properties that allow cats.

Necorepa Real Estate is a collaborative venture between Neco Republic, an animal welfare organization that also runs a chain of cat cafes/adoption centers for rescue cats (plus a cat hotel) and Tokyo-based realtor Innov. The company doesn’t just list apartments that merely allow cats, either, but ones with features that make them extra attractive to the cats themselves, like the climbing/play ledges and places specifically designed for litter boxes.

If a property is very cat friendly, it earns the  Nekorepa Seal of Approval . They must satisfy  three criteria: abundant natural sunlight (to enhance cat naps), floors and walls with scratch-resistant surfaces, and a design that ensures your furry friend can’t slip out of the apartment and get lost while you’re away from home.

A  portion of initial lease fees, as well as 222 yen (US$2) of each tenant’s monthly rent in properties managed directly by the company, is donated to Neco Republic’s cat cafes, to help keep the felines healthy and happy during their wait to find permanent homes. Most of Necorepa Real Estate’s apartments are in Tokyo, but it also has properties in Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, and Aichi Prefectures, with its full listings available online through its website here.

Couple finds a solution for  ‘super clingy’ cat with simple hack

A London couple has let the cat out of the bag, at least regarding how they amuse their “super clingy” cat while focusing on their work-from-home jobs.

I do object to the word “clingy”. In our house we prefer the word “cuddly”. Lily is a great cuddler and has been called a “love bug” so she’s often referred to as Lily Bug.

A London couple’s cat Ziggy is a cuddle bug too. Both humans now work from home and Ziggy decided that their laps should be available 24/7. This put a crimp in the human’s work day so they came up with the idea of creating a “lap” out of sweat pants and sneakers, stuffed so that the lap would be inviting and soft. This faux lap was placed on the sofa with a heated map. Ziggy is in heaven. Hmmmm, maybe Lily needs one of these!

White House Cats?

While we don’t get purrlitical on Feline Opines, Oliver did throw his hat into the ring in 2016 to run for Purresident. Sadly, his inexperience (he was a kitten) was his downfall. You can read about his campaign here.  Since we haven’t had any feline Purresidents in the White House, we wanted to find out if any felines ever resided in the White House.

The first known cat in the White House was named Tabby, who lived with Abraham Lincoln and his family. There was another feline there too named Dixie.  Lincoln treated his cats as family members (as it should be!). During one formal White House banquet he fed Tabby from the table with a gold fork. Mrs. Lincoln was appalled and told her husband this was “shameful in front of the guests.” (I hiss in her general direction!).

President Lincoln once remarked, “Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore, she doesn’t talk back!”

During the siege of Petersburg in March 1865, (a few weeks prior to his assisination) Lincoln was distracted the sounds of kittens meowing. He found the kittens, brought them inside and cuddled them in his lap. Lincoln whispered to the cats, “Kitties, thank God you are cats, and can’t understand this terrible strife that is going on,” later remarking to a colonel that he hoped “these poor little motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly.”

The first purebred cat in the White House was “Siam,” who was also the first Siamese cat to arrive in the U.S. in 1878. She was a gift to First Lady Lucy Hayes from the American Consul in Bangkok, Thailand. Nearly a century later, Gerald Ford’s daughter Susan brought another Siamese, “Shan,” to live at Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Teddy Roosevelt White House had Slippers and Tom Quartz, Woodrow Wilson had Puffins, and Calvin Coolidge had Tiger, who accompanied him around the White House. “Socks,” Chelsea Clinton’s cat, was a handsome tuxedo cat who came from a shelter. At this time there is no feline residing in the White House.

Mad at your Ex? Put Their Name on a Shelter Litterbox

I love it when shelters dream up creative fund raising ideas and this one is a doozy.  For a donation of $20.00 or more, the Concho Valley Paws shelter in Texas painted the name of your ex on the bottom of a litterbox and, as they said in their promotion, they will let their team of “well-fed felines super poopers cover your former #1 with plenty of #2.