All Blue Kitties
GIVING THANKS 2015
We wanted to tell you about the things for which we and our humans are giving thanks today.
We asked Mom first. This was here reply.
- Marrying Dad 42 years ago.
- Us and the kitties that came before.
- All her friends, especially those she’s made blogging.
Dad was next to give us his list of thanks.
- A loving wife and eight loving kitties.
- A comfortable life.
- The opportunity to serve others.
Then it was our turn.
- Mau is thankful for Allie and Cat Scouts. Lisbeth is thankful for Charles. Astrid is thankful for Sampy.
- Chris as she always brings us treats and nip and bonito flakes.
- A home with a mom and dad who cater to all our needs and love us unconditionally.
This is Lily Olivia, Lisbeth and Astrid enjoying the latest catnip bounty from Chris. If you look closely, you’ll see it in their furs. Lily snorphled so much nip that she slept the remainder of the day!
As we give thanks for these things and so many others, we pray that all those kitties awaiting homes will soon be enjoying warmth, comfort and love in a forever home.
Sending you all our best wishes for a happy and blessed Thanksgiving.
Our Giveaway for Catify to Satisfy
Last Friday Mom posted Part 2 of her interview with cat behaviorist and Animal Planet star, Jackson Galaxy. She also reviewed his and Kate Benjamin’s new book, Catify to Satisfy. If you would like to have the opportunity to win a copy of this must have book, leave a comment here by 5 p.m. EST tomorrow. The winner will be selected using Random.org.
Check back tomorrow for Part 3 of the interview and updates on the Jackson Galaxy Foundation.
Purrs & paw-pats, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
CHEWY REVIEW: PRIMAL TREATS
Primal Beef Liver Munchies
We finally nagged and whined at Mom enough to get her to select something good from Chewy.com for this month’s product testing. We kept seeing all our friends try out food and treats and lounger/scratchers and other good stuff. But our mom kept selecting litter and cleaning products to try. Pffft! And we heard she was going to try litter again this month until she read reviews that said it was super dusty.
So we finally scored some noms. Mom selected Primal Treats for our taste test. These treats are for both woofies and kitties. They are freeze-dired treats, which we usually love. The ones we received were Beef Liver Munchies made from antibiotic-free beef raised without added hormones. The treats have no added salt or sugar, no preservatives and are grain and gluten free. The Munchies are quite obviously healthy treats.
When Mom said treats, we all came running and were gathered around the kitchen as she opened the Chewy box. Dad sat ready with the camera as she doled out these rather large treats. Both Lisbeth and Astrid licked at a couple and picked them up in their mouths but didn’t try to eat them. Fiona and Giulietta (the finicky girls), sniffed and walked away. Lily and Mauricio didn’t seem to mind the large size. Lily ate one and Mauricio ate two but neither wanted more. Calista Jo licked at a couple and after Mom cut them into much smaller pieces, she ate about one and a half and walked away. Misty May was upstairs and didn’t try any.
After the official testing, Astrid started pawing at and trying to get into the bag. Mom took out another one of the Munchies and cut it up into small pieces. Astrid watched attentively but only pawed at the pieces when Mom put them in front of her. She did not eat any.
Mom thinks our problem with the treats was 1) size (they really are more a size for the woofies), and 2) we don’t eat a lot of beef. We prefer chicken and tuna. Primal makes a variety of treats, and the Munchies also come in turkey liver which we may have liked better.
In conclusion, three of the seven who tried these found them yummy. The others not so much.
Disclaimer: We’d like to thank Chewy.com for the opportunity to taste test the Primal Treats Beef Liver Munchies as part of their Blogger Outreach Program. We received the treats for free in return for our honest review. The opinions expressed are strictly those of Kitties Blue.
My Pet Human Giveaway
If you have not entered our giveaway for the adorable book, My Pet Human, written and illustrated by Yasmine Surovec, it’s not too late. To read the review and leave a comment for the opportunity to receive a copy, click here. Comments must be received by Friday, October 16, at 5 p.m. EDT.
Purrs and paw-pats, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
MOM IS PULLING HER HAIR OUT
So the frustration level at our house is at DEFCON 1. What does that mean? If our mom could drop a nuclear bomb on APPLE and her MacBook Air, we are pretty sure she would.
A couple months ago, she got a new MacBook Air. She had pretty much worn out her old one, and her Apple Care three-year contract had expired.
Mom has never been able to get some things to work correctly, like migrating her photos to the new computer. And the screen would act wonky sometimes, freezing the entire computer.
We could never get our outgoing mail for The Cat on My Head to work. For a while we were able to use one of our other servers to send it, then that stopped working. Then a few days ago all our outgoing mail stopped working. ARGH!
Mom had appointments all day Tuesday and set Wednesday aside to try to fix things—not expecting it to take the entire day.
APPLE got her AOL and Cox outgoing e-mail working, but The Cat on My Head still couldn’t send mail. The next call to our domain host company ended up shutting The Cat on My Head down completely—nothing in and nothing out. ARGH! ARGH!
Another call to APPLE and another Call to West Host and (how she isn’t sure) all ingoing and outgoing mail is working in all accounts. Yippee!
But APPLE released an update today (El Capitan), to fix bugs in their OS X Yosemite operating system. They suggested that installing that might help the glitches that were causing her computer to freeze up. So she installed!
All e-mail continued to work, so she was elated and, may we say, optimistic about getting on with some things she needed to do for Cat Scouts!
She went to piZap and started working on a photo and after about an hour, everything looked purrfect. Okay, pick save to computer, fill in a name for her creation, pick where it should be saved and hit SAVE. Boink! SAVE…Boink! No matter what she tried all she heard was Boink! Boink! Boink! Well you get the idea. Nothing was happening. Once again the computer was frozen! ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!
Okay, spend an hour trying to figure out why this didn’t work. Finally give up and try another photo editor: Create…save…freeze…Boink! And another photo editor: Create..save…freeze…Boink! Again, we think you get the idea!
ARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGHARGH!
We are pretty surprised we didn’t hear any HBO words. We think she didn’t have the energy to utter them. Or purrhaps she is saving them for her next call to APPLE!
Whatever…it’s now Thursday and none of us are feeling very thankful.
Purrs and paw-pats, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
p.s. All of this is the reason we didn’t do any visiting yesterday. And we are not holding out hope for today. Purrlease forgive us.
KITTIES BLUE REVIEW NEW LITTER FROM SMARTCAT
Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Pioneer Pet. We received a jug of Smart-Cat® lightweight, clay-coated litter free of charge in exchange for our honest review. The opinions expressed are entirely our own and not influenced by Pioneer Pet or any of its representatives.
In April, Kitties Blue reviewed SmartCat® plant-based litter from Pioneer Pet. I thought it was the Best Cat Litter Ever and titled the post just that. You can read that review here. Unfortunately Kitties Blue did not agree with me. Only Astrid and Calista Jo used it.
While at the BlogPaws conference I spent quite a bit of time talking to the Pioneer Pet representative about the SmartCat® litter. She shared with me at the time that a new litter was in production and promised to send it to us to try when it became available.
This new SmartCat® product also is a lightweight (50 percent lighter than regular clay litters), clumping litter. It has an all-natural grain core with a clay coating. Unlike the original SmartCat®, all Kitties Blue went right too it without hesitation. I attribute this to the clay coating. As we normally use a clay litter, it felt familiar to them when they stepped in the box and covered their deposits.
Pioneer Pet claims that this new litter has multi-cat odor control. As with the original plant-based litter, the clay-coated litter is supposed to absorb liquid so quickly (forming a hard clump) that odor does not have the chance to be released into the air.
Though this new litter does clump, it did not make the “rock-hard” clumps like the original, and thus the odor is not controlled as well. This is mostly evident when scooping the box. By just walking into the small room where this box is located, I am not assaulted by the over-whelming ammonia smell so many other litters emit.
Though I may get some odor when scooping this litter, I am not engulfed in and gagging from clouds of dust. Pioneer Pet claims this litter is 99 percent dust free and that is not an exaggeration. After several days of use, there is a light layering of dust on the items in the room, which I would expect.
It’s light weight does make it easy to scoop. And the kitties do not track this out of the box as they do with some other brands, which makes me very happy.
The litter comes in a jug weighing 10 pounds. It took an entire jug to fill a litter box measuring 13 X 16 X 7 inches to about a depth of three inches.
If I had my choice, Kitties Blue would be using the original SmartCat® plant-based litter without the clay coating. As a good cat guardian, however, I have to give them what they like and will use. And they are very happy with the SmartCat® lightweight clay-coated litter.
A jug of this litter will sell for $12.99 when available.
ANOTHER TUXIE TUESDAY DOOZY OF A SNOOZY
We tuxies present you with another Doozy of a Snoozy on Tuesday. We have been very busy working hard to keep our New Year’s Resolution #9. On this particular night we invited fursib, Fiona (the grey blob with the purple collar in the background), to join us in piling on Dad. As we dictate this to Mom, Misty May is in the exact position (on Dad’s chest) as she is in this photo. She is totally her daddy’s girl, and that is her snoozy spot of choice until it’s time for lights out. That’s when she moves to Mom’s head.
L to R: Misty May, Mauricio and Lisbeth with Fiona in the back.
Of course, Mom’s side of the bed also has cats. Usually, Lily Olivia is curled up under her arm on her left side and Calista Jo is in the same spot on the right. Positions will shift and change throughout the night, often with some under-cover action from Lisbeth and Lily Olivia. But no matter who lands where, the six of us are always snuggled in until breakfast time.
Astrid never joins us in bed as she chooses to stay downstairs by herself and Giulietta only shows up on occasion. So you see, we are not the bed hogs the humans claim we are. But we’re working on it. We won’t really be content until we force them to sleep in the guest room, and we have their our bed all to ourselves.
You do know we’re only joshing…right? If the humans move to the guest room, so do we!
Purrs and paw-pats, Misty May, Mauricio and Lisbeth
p.s. from the Mom: If you missed yesterday’s post, click here to leave a comment and earn a chance to win a Lilly Brush Be Forever Furless.
OUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
As cats, we normally don’t make resolutions, but we are so tired of seeing that letter to Santa efurryday on our sidebar, we decided to make some. We figure if the lazy lady of the manor has something else to post there, she will file that Santa letter away on our poetry page and move on.
So here are our 2015 resolutions, which we have been promised will replace the Santa letter tomorrow. We decided that 12 would be a good number as it’s the number of months in the year.
1. Get more scritches.
2. Get more belly rubs.
3. Get more treats and nip.
4. Always come when called unless napping, playing, eating, watching bird TV, day dreaming or participating in other cat-approved activities.
5. If in, demand to go out.
6. If out, demand to come in.
7. Don’t wash our butts in front of company unless it is an emergency.
8. Don’t eat Mom’s flowers when she’s watching.
9. Take up as much space in the humans’ bed as possible by sleeping east/west instead of north/south.
10. Clear the kitchen counters of all items whenever possible.
11. Pretend to be deaf whenever a human is speaking to us.
12. Always help Mom with her crossword puzzles and sudoku.
Have you made or do you plan to make any resolutions? If so, we’d like to hear them. We might get some good ideas for next year.
Our brofur Bailey‘s pals, Sharkie and Blue, had another adventure on Sunday. Purrlease drop by tomorrow for details and photos.
Purrs and paw-pats, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
MONDAY MEOWSINGS: SECRET PAWS PREZZIES
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Lily Olivia gave Mom 40 face kisses to make up for the cookie fiasco of the day before. So, in the spirit of forgiveness, our humans allowed us to open our Secret Paws prezzies that afternoon. As reported previously, our Secret Paws came from Mom Alana, Crepes, Mrs. Peabody, Louie, Niles, Sprinkle and Doodle from Cat in the Fridge. If you missed seeing the incredible sketch of Astrid that Alana made for Mom, you can see it here.
Here’s a couple photos of our loot with Fiona photobombing in the second one.
We received our favorite treat, Pounce, as well as Simply Nourish Freeze Dried, Turkey Treats. We haven’t tried these yet. We also received two fuzzy mice with feather tails, and a huge pack of Catnip Puffs as well as that cool owl with a feather tail. It hangs from a doorknob.
Calista Jo & Fiona (in their Christmas flowers) check out the owl toy.
Misty May, Calista Jo, Giulietta, Lily Olivia, Lisbeth and Mauricio inspect the Catnip Puffs and wrapping paper and nom Pounce.
Lily Olivia (wearing her crocheted flower from Kitty Cat Chronicles) and Lisbeth surrounded by Catnip Puffs.
We are extremely grateful to Mom Alana and all the gang at Cat in the Fridge for these most pawsome prezzies and treats. Secret Paws rocks!
Purrlease join us tomorrow for a special post: Sharkie & Blue’s Most Excellent Cycling Adventure. If you missed our post, We Have Holiday Visitors, Sharkie and Blue are our honorary brofur Bailey‘s plushie furiends. They are visiting from Rome for the holidays.
Purrs & Paw-pats, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth & Calista Jo
A NAUGHTY MEOWY CHRISTMAS GREETING
Well, it is Wordless Wednesday, but Mom said we could not remain quiet as she had intended. Yes, she said that we must confess our naughtiness once again. Though we saw her put our Secret Paws gifts under the Christmas Tree, she says that Lily’s transgression today could find them becoming Valentine’s gifts.
So…here’s what happened today. Mom was baking cookies and Lily kept trying to get into everything, including the shortening, which Mom found her licking. Needless to say, she was not happy with Lily Olivia’s behavior but was willing to cut her a little slack. Then IT happened. Mom had to turn her back for a nano second to open the door to the catio for Giulietta. When she turned back, she found Lily Olivia standing on the cookie sheet nomming an unbaked cookie!
Though he was not the one involved in the cookie incident, Lily tried to make up by giving Dad seven kisses at bedtime. Mom said that even had Lily Olivia given her the seven kisses, that would not have been enough of an apology!
Can you believe it? We can’t seem to get through even one day without somebuddy acting out. It really isn’t our fault. The decorations and unusual activities around the holidays upset our normal routine and get us all confused. It makes it so easy to forget our manners and get into trouble. So we think it is totally unfair to withhold our loot. Please cross your paws that we can make it through the day so that we can get our gifts on Christmas morning.
Finally, we’d like to share our first ever Meowy Christmas card for those of you who did not receive it through either snail or e-mail.
Ho, ho, ho, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Calista Jo
p.s. Look at those innocent faces. Santa will never believe we haven’t been purrfectly good all year!
