Crazy Cat Lady Part 1: Because I’m Not Dumb Enough to Believe I’ll Devote Only One Post to the Cats

I only ever really make posts about what I do on the weekends, so you might be wondering what I do during the work-week since, ya know, I’m unemployed.

I’ll have you know though that I am a VERY busy cat-mum and house-de-facto, and looking after a kitten is no joke!

She’s bitey, and smelly, and always wants my attention. I even have to feed her every once in a while, and put mouth-wash stuff in her water! Plus, she’s only just started going down for a nap during the day!

Alas! My fantasies of Booboo and Grace becoming bosom-buddies and keeping each other company also never eventuated, and I’m not entirely sure which cat to blame…

Coincidentally, my house has never been so consistently clean, tidy, or organised (I even KonMari’d some of that shit, which I might make a post about another day).

I’m also doing some study online, but I dragged that shit out and avoided it for a year and half, so really I’m just catching-up on stuff I should have been doing all along.

My bad.

The important thing though is that I have yet to take-up daytime drinking. No secretly toxic, but publicly lauded (cat)mummy wine-time here!

Anywho, as you can probably tell, the Booboo was driving Bae and I nuts. To get all her energy out, we tried taking her out for walkies, had to play with her for like, HOURS a day, and she’d still wake us up in the middle of the night for play-time and shit.

Don’t believe me? Look at this nut, LOOK. AT. HER. She reminds me of a fu-dog…

Also, kitty-litter trays inside are the fucking worst. There were mornings when I thought that the ammonia was LITERALLY going to strip me of my sense of smell forever.

Combine that with the resident crocodillies meaning I couldn’t just let ‘em out whenevs, and I was like, I really gotta get ‘round to building that catio.

What is a catio you ask? Well, cat + patio = catio.

It’s for crazy cat-ladies like me who feel bad about having their cats indoors (It deprives them!), while also feeling bad about having them outdoors (It’ll kill the native wildlfie! And the actual cats maybe! No joke, country folk ‘round here have LITERALLY make jokes about shooting cats with arrows).

So what you do is, you can either enclose your whole garden, from fence to rooftop (seems extreme, but whatevs, you do you), or you can just enclose a lil’ section of your balcony, patio, veranda, or whatnot (like I did), and then enrich the heck outta that space!

After looking in Bunnings and the local hardware store, first by myself, then with Bae, then thinking about how much we could spend, and then planning the structure and the materials we wanted to use, and then making sure the plan was cat-proof, but also completely collapsible and wouldn’t damage any part of the rental-property, Bae and I finally decided to order some specifically-made cat-netting online from a company called CatNets.

Once the nets arrived, I was super impressed with myself, ‘cause I designed and built like, 90% of the catio ALL. BY. MYSELF.

No ladder? That don’t matter. I just stood on our Esky.

Didn’t wanna put nails in the walls? There were already some there, just hang that shit up!

How you gonna make sure the sides don’t slip down? Cable-tie that shit, and peg it into the ground!

All in all, I think I only used like, eight staples in the fence-post, and you can barely even tell!

Even so, I’m really hoping the real-estate don’t have a problem with it come inspection time…

I’m pretty happy with the end result (even though it’s kinda bare at the moment), but the Booboo and Grace still seem to enjoy it somewhat.

I’ll take you for the grand tour!

So, the cats do have a little grassy area, so they can either eat the grass, or poop in it. Booboo seems to favour eating half of it, while Grace is relishing pooping in the other half. Bae even bought and sprinkled some grass seeds inside (and outside) the enclosure, to eventually give them more smells and things to hide-in.

We also got a native fan-palm pot-plant for them to sit under, with Mr. and Mrs. Silverwings presiding over it, so that the kitties don’t mistake the soil for a toilet, and erm… soil it, as they have done to unguarded pot-plants in the past. As you can see, there’s their cutie poopy-box next to it as well… Gotta hide the poop-shame.

I even found a good use for my fair-trade Oxfam cat-mat!

You wanna know the pièce de résistance though? My real coup d’état, if you will?

I managed to convince Bae to buy a two-hundred-dollary-doo sliding-door cat-flap.

“WUT DAFUQ,” I hear you say. “For a household currently existing on one income, you sure seem to be spending a stupid amount of money on these dumb cats.”

And to you I say, “Who are you to lecture me about spending questionable amounts of money on questionable luxury cat items? My Bae?!” =P

But hear me out. I’ll convince you, just as I (or rather the cats) convinced him.

See, the first morning after building the catio, Bae and I wake-up, and Booboo is no-where to be seen. Usually she’s either sitting on the bed-side tables waiting like the faithful hound she (spiritually) embodies, or she’s pawing at the door if we have sacrilegiously opted to keep it closed that night.

Suffice to say, her absence is weird, so we go to look for her.

We look in the linen-cupboard. Not there.

We look in the wardrobe. Nada.

We look in the spare bedroom – maybe she’s harassing Grace. Yeah, nah.

We look in the cupboard under the stairs, where we store the garbage, because hey, sometimes cats are garbage-cats. But no, not there either.

I whistle out the front door, and the Booboo comes running over from under the car, clawing manically at the screen, as if we were the ones that put her out there.

So what the hell happened, you ask?

I’ll tell you what happened.

That little moron, that petit crétin has jumped off the friggin bedroom balcony during the night, trying to get into the downstairs catio.

SO, off we go to Bunnings, first thing on a Saturday morning to get the damn cat-door. Keep in mind, this was also when we were going back and forth every two and half days between Cairns, and while we wanted the cats to be able to use the catio while we were gone, we were also just really fucking tired from all the driving.

There is a legit reason this contraption is so expensive though, ‘cause it lets cats wander freely in-out-out of the house and catio, without needing to leave the door open (‘cause ya know, robbery), or having to cut a hole in your glass door (rental-properties, eh).

The whole mechanism is also pretty cool – it slots into the sliding-door tracks, then uses tension and some other physics kinda thing to keep itself in place, and you can install and uninstall it multiple times, whenever you need. It also comes with a locking thingy for extra security (which is good), and a rubber-strip to make sure all your sweet, sweet air-con doesn’t escape out of any cracks.

It was a bit finicky to install, and it could probably be made a little more user-friendly for the less handy-people out there, but I’m happy with the end product.

“Your next project?” you ask.

Well, the cats already have this and this eating enrichment thingies (yes, I’m insane), as well as some indoor toys, but I wanna build my own cat-tower!

We’ve bought them before, and previous cats never really took to them, but I suspect Booboo would. Now, Bae doesn’t wanna spend $150.00 on another dud cat-tower (fair enough), but I still wanna try one out, goddamnit! Nothing but the best for MY babby cat!

So I’m going to trrrryyyy to make one out of used pallets from the local Community Garden (again, another post).

I’ve already drawn the design, but there’s still a good chance that I will never get ‘round to making the damn thing, which is WHY I’ve put it up here. Maybe by publicly stating my intentions, I’ll forcefully shame myself into following through with my DIY projects!

Adios amigos!

Animal Adventures

When bae was like, ‘Plz move to Far North Tropical Queensland with me’, one of the many shameless bribery tactics he employed was the promise of cutie animals =P

And not just letting me rescue Baby Boo-Boo either (Short for Boudica, because she’s fierce and bite-y, like the bad-ass Warrior Queen).

No, I was promised wild animals! Crocodillies, cassowaries, berbs, and more! And Far North Queensland has so far delivered!

We’ve been to Etty Bay twice now, and as well as stinger-nets, a life-guard, beautiful forest up to the shore-line, a local cafe with decent coffee, and being only a 15 minute drive away (try finding that in Brisbane), there have been MANY Cassowaries, INCLUDING A BABY!

According to this cool website about Cassowaries, you can differentiate and identify Cassowaries based-on the droopiness of their butts (boys are droopy, and girls are… perky???), the size and colour of their ‘neck wattles’ (NOT based-on sexual dimorphism – boys and girls can both have big neck scrotes!), and the size and shape of their ‘casques’ (the head horn things).

We also saw another Cassowary on the way to Etty Bay (which I don’t have the photo of at the moment), meaning we may have seen up to FIVE. DIFFERENT. CASSOWARIES. Seeing as though Southern Cassowaries are an endangered species, with only 1200 wild specimens left in Far North Queensland, we have potentially seen up to 0.475% of all of the Cassowaries left in Australia.

BIG DEAL.

Closer to home though – quite literally, only 50 metres form the new house – there is a beautiful river-ocean estuary-type thing, with a lil’ slice of beach and sand. Completely un-fucking-swimmable though. No stinger nets, no life-guard, absolute croc-country, complete with a yellow ‘ACHTUNG’ crocodile warning-sign.

Now, Etty Bay had something similar too, but it was a much smaller ‘sighting’ rather than ‘confirmed’ warning-sign, so I was like, pfft, people are actually here and swimming, there’s no crocodile! So off we went for a walk and a swim, with nary another thought! And of course, nothing. No croc sighting, no danger.

Back at home with Etty Bay in mind, I figured that the local Council is really just covering its arse when it comes to warning-signs. So bae and I went for a walk along the local beach, and lo and behold! Crocodilly!

This was kindly edited by a friend, who pointed-out that I wasn’t actually pointing at the crocodile…

I later found out from the locals that this is only the small crocodilly! He’s either the 1 metre croc, or the 1.6 metre croc, but definitely NOT the 2 metre croc. So yes, I have three local crocs, the largest of which is apparently getting more and more bold when the locals gut their fishing catches!

So I guess the cats are definitely indoor-cats now…

Living It Up in the Motel California

We got a houuuuuuuse. Yesssssssssss.

It’s in a lovely place called Coconuts. I assume it’s called that because there are coconuts absolutely EVERYWHERE. I plan on learning how to crack and scull ’em as soon as we’re settled in, and I might even get into making ‘fresh young coconut’ – you know, the drink with the delicious, crazy amounts of sugar-syrup that you get in every Thai and Vietnamese restaurant. I’m sure the local cane-growers will appreciate my new found love of sugar (gib job plz, cane-farmers).

I’m really just super relieved though, because living out of a motel, even if only for a week, is… not great. Cannot stress that enough. Don’t get me wrong, the motel is completely serviceable, and would usually be more than enough, except I’m actually living in it ’round the clock, instead of just using it as a stop-gap between tourist outings.

That and the cats are driving me fucking nuts. Their truce was short-lived it seemed, and when the still-as-of-yet unnamed kitty isn’t constantly attempting to ‘play’ with Grace [i.e. jumping on her back and biting her on the neck], she’s either crying for her third serving of food, or pooping unfathomable amounts.

The closest they’ve gotten to each other post-carrier, without hissing and clawing.
Kitty looking smug/suspicious after getting reprimanded for smagging Grace.

Thank god for free WiFi, a Netflix account, and a now mangled cat-toy.

I have however, perfected the art of cooking in a motel-room, without a stove-top, microwave, or even a kitchen-sink. All we’ve had access to is a kettle and fridge! Suspecting something like this might happen (and that it would take the government-contractor forever to move our stuff), we did pack a couple of kitchen things in the car. Cue a visit to the local Woolies – which has a surprisingly good Asian-food section – and I devised the following ~delicious~ recipe.

Cook the vermicelli rice-noodles with water boiled from the kettle. I insulated the pot with tea-towels in a somewhat futile attempt to keep it warmer for longer.
Warm-up the can of satay-sauce in a bowl full of hot water (again from the kettle).
Warm the pre-cut veggies and cashews in… you guessed it! Warm water from the kettle!
Drain the noo-noos and veggies in the bottom of your motel shower (don’t forget to stomp any left-over pieces of food down the drain!).
Finally, mix the noo-noos, veggies, satay-sauce, and cashew nuts altogether in a bowl. Add some ABC hot-sauce (it’s better than sriracha), some salt, and it’s pretty alright.

Adapt. Overcome. Survive.
Surprisingly edible…

Bone-app-the-teeth.

Get a Move On

Moving house can be fun.

I actually usually like doing it. I get a fresh start, it’s an excuse to de-clutter my crap, I get to um-and-ah over all the brand new ways I can store and display all my stuff in a brand new house. It’s pretty all right.

It’s also an opportunity to show-off how great I am at packing and unpacking a house. No joke, after 20-ish house-moves in more than 20-ish years, I can confidently say that my one true, undeniable skill in life is the ability to pack and unpack an entire house in a ridiculously short amount of time, without a trace. The record I believe was unpacking EVERYTHING in three days, only a couple of days before Christmas, when we hosted eleven people, and no one could even tell we had just moved. It’s true, THEY TOLD ME SO.

That said however, moving cities blows.

Moving with cats kinda blows.

Moving 17 hours away in a State that says you have to view a property before signing a lease, therefore leaving you technically homeless, definitely blows.

What blows most of all though, is moving with the proviso that a government-contractor has the sole responsibility of moving your belongings, and that said government-contractor is currently super duper busy. Too busy to move your shit.

Can I organise it myself and get reimbursed later then? No.

What if I find something cheaper than the contractor? No.

Could you have told me this four weeks before the move instead of one? No.

Can you tell me when you’ll be able to get my shit up there then? No.

What if I give you a very specific date by which I need it to be done, can you at least then tell me if you can’t do it, so that in the meantime I can maybe organise for my shit to get temporarily stored elsewhere, because my lease has ended and I don’t want everything I own to end-up on the curb? No.

No? NO? ‘Kay. Cool. Whatever, I guess it’ll all just figure itself out then.

On the bright-side though, my cats were incredibly cute, albeit annoying on the drive-up, and I lived in constant fear of them over-heating, even with the air-con blasting the whole way.

Exhibit A. While these two started their new-found acquaintance hissing, clawing, and otherwise growling at each other, they eventually bonded over their shared hatred and/or trauma of spending 17 hours in a cat-carrier in a moving car.

Exhibit B. On one of our frequent breaks, Grace decided she’d had enough of our shit, and was jumping ship. Jokes on her though, this is why we got the leash. The as-of-yet unnamed kitty didn’t seem to mind the car as much, but still wanted to see what all the fuss in the bushes was about.

Going…
Going…
Gone.

Until next time.

Au revoir.