Katz Tales Giveaway Ebook: How Boris The Cat Was Reunited With His Family

Thanks to my brother Ian who is a whiz with PDF......

Au,

Target and

Guido

would like to give you an early Christmas present: A free collection of Katz Tales: How Boris The Cat Was Reunited With His Family.

Contains the 4 tales of how Boris was lost, rescued and reunited with his family, as well as 2 tales from the book Katz Tales featuring Scoop, the kitty who went before....

Just click on the link to download the PDF

Guido Thinks Out Of The Box

Au The Food Inspector

Au is now 100% recovered from his hepatitis and thanks to the RETROMAD1 medicine he took, his immunity is now high again.

As a result of this rude health, the little remaining food discipline in our house has vanished.

We used to pride ourselves on having cats who knew the difference between their plates and ours, and who respected our eating hours.  T-man and me ate in solitary splendour.

How times have changed!  After spending the first few months of this year saying, "I don't want it, I'm not hungry, leeve me alone..." Au is now permanently on the lookout for food.

If you have a plate, Au is there, monitoring every mouthful.

Our food inspector is so dedicated that I found myself apologising to him the other day for eating a cucumber and salad cream sandwich without offering him a bite first.

I told Au he doesn't like cucumber, but he ate some anyway.  Just to prove a point.

T-man made the mistake of making himself a chicken sandwich, and Au was on it like a knife.

After a tussle of wills, Au got a large chunk of chicken and T-man got lots of lettuce and bread with a smidgeon of chicken.


We may not be able to call a sandwich our own, but as long as Au is happy and eating, we don't really care.

Au is getting a belly again, and he's all purry and fuzzy with pleasure at having his own way over every meal.

Discipline is over-rated.

PS If Au could go online, he'd buy an oven from Appliances Online in the UK.   And not just because the kind people there are sending him a $50 gift certificate for cat treats but because he's finally seen an oven that could hold 2 turkeys at once!

Getting To Know Guido

Guido has been with us for a few months now and he's settling in nicely.  We're getting to know him, and he's getting to know us.

Guido is an incredibly sweet little cat.  He loves to purr, loves to have his chin squizzled, and is very fond of playing with string.

He also has wild moments every morning where he runs around the walls, trashing everything in his path. 

Every evening, Guido marches up to Target, smiles sweetly, and then bites him firmly in the neck.  They wrestle for a few minutes, and then Target huffs off.

They've started wrestling in the morning too, which is fun except for when they decide I am the purrfect battlefield divider. 

This morning each chose a side and ducked down.  Then they popped up and down, pawing at each other. 

It's fun to watch but whenever a paw slips, I'm the one that gets a claw.  

That's my role: collateral damage.


To see more of Au, Target and Guido visit our Katz Tales facebook page... 

Target: It's My Gotcha Day Tomorrow

It's my 4th Gotcha Day tomorrow!  This was me on my first day.  I was playing with T-man. See how big his hand is?

 

I took on the job as office manager. It's my job to keep mummy cat in line. And earning us cat biscuits.

 

And this is me today.  I am still working as the office manager but as you can see, my job specs have grown. 

While I was snoozing hard at work, I heard someone say that roast lamb is my favourite. Also, there's this big package in the fridge that mummy cat smuggled in when she thought I wasn't looking.  Now they may say I'm a fur brain but I think it all adds up to a yummy lamb lunch for me! 

I'll keep you posted.

Au and Guido

Second breakfast is the best!

LIM Frus And Blur

I am celebrating because I have just managed to beat the system.  Yes, I have disconnected one of my two telephone lines.  It's a miracle.

I used to have phone and fax lines, but in the last year or two, we just haven't used the fax line at all.  And as I'm paying rent every month for that line, I called Malaysia Telekom to ask what I had to do to cancel it.

"Well," said the girl, "You need to bring your passport, a letter with your company chop (local slang for stamp), a Telekom bill and of course company documents: your Form 40, Form......"

"That's all the stuff I gave you when I registered this line," I said.  "Why do you need it all again?  How about I prove who I am, and you look up the rest of the paperwork you have on file?"

"It's POLICY," says the girl haughtily.  This is a typical response here in Malaysia from bean counters and paper pushers who enjoying piling up red tape.

I collected the paperwork which took about an hour.  As the nearest Telekom office is 40 minutes away, I knew I was in for wasting a whole morning.  It was a day before a public holiday, Raya, and it was supposed to be business as usual.  However, knowing how Telekom work, or rather don't, I called to make sure they were open.

"Yes we are open!" the girl said.  So I went and they were closed.  My pal Bernard reported he had exactly the same problem.  You can imagine the depths of our language. 

I went again about 10 days ago.  This time I was told to fill out an extra form.  Then I was whisked to see Ms Mika, who promptly chucked the form out saying, "That's not the one you need to fill up."  She eyed the stack of papers I was carrying with awe and said, "What's that for?"

"It's my passport, Form 40, and so on," I say.

"But you don't need all that!" says Ms Mika.  "Just show me proof of identity and a letter and it's done."

She was true to her word.  It took less than 5 minutes and went without a hitch.

Ms Mika is wonderful.  But seriously, having wasted so much time and energy, I could have cheerfully murdered her.  I guess that's human nature.

PS Frus is local slang for frustration, the feeling everyone in Malaysia feels when dealing with any kind of paperwork, and blur is slang for stupid or switched off people.

Tock-Tober Tock Thursday

Target's Plump Tocks

Au's Tocks Are Filling Out Again

Guido's Cheerful Herringbone Tocks

In case you're curious: our kitties have kinky tails (even Target's isn't truly straight but has 3 little kinks in it) thanks to a common recessive gene that most Far Eastern kitties have...

Guido Says Goodbye To Soup!

Last week I met up with Loretta Shepherd, a local turtle expert, and we took Soup to a secret location and released him.

He is now free, and living with other Malayan Box Turtles.  Hopefully, he'll have lots of little dinosaurs and become a big noise in his pond.

Saying goodbye wasn't easy, especially for Guido, who treated Soup as a pet.  Guido is so gentle, that Soup didn't mind talking to the cat.  As you can see here, the two were pals...

Guido, "Hey man, I hear you're leaving."

Guido, "I'll miss you!"

Soup sets out in his new home.  Safe and free again.

LIM: Animal Release or Fangsheng

Jan asked why I thought that Soup the Malayan Box turtle may have been captured from the wild and released for merit. This is because…..

Fangsheng is an old Buddhist tradition that says we can gain merit by rescuing trapped animals and setting them free.

Animal release is part of Vesak Day and other Buddhist holidays. It is also adopted by many non-Buddhists who think animal release brings them luck.

Rather than look for birds caught in a fisherman’s net or something, people BUY animals and set them free. Of course traders make money out of this by capturing wild animals, selling them, and getting them back in the cage the moment the customer leaves.

Ironically there is also a group who say that animals are released as a symbolic act to liberation that commemorates those in captivity or tortured.

And not a thought for the thousands of animals that die from fear, stress, and broken wings, limbs and goodness knows what else during this process!

If you are in the US you may have seen that twit Richard Gere promoting this cruelty during his Visa campaign.

Here it is on  youtube but for those of you who have slow connections...

It’s the one where he goes to an Indian market, overhears a little girl say that her brother is going on a journey, and that she wants to buy and free a caged bird for good luck. When she can’t afford it, Gere rushes in with his Visa card and buys them all for her.

Honestly it makes me so mad. If you want good luck or merit or to make a symbolic gesture for those wrongly imprisoned, then volunteer at an animal shelter or go human rights organisation.

End of rant…

What I See When I Eat Chicken

is dat rost chikkun?  it's mine!  give it to me, NOW!

Soup The Turtle

If you're on Facebook you will have seen that I picked up a Malayan Box Turtle on a busy road on (Malaysia) National Day two weeks ago.  We've called him Soup, because that is often the fate of these animals.

Soup is a Cites II turtle so he needs to be breeding somewhere.  The national zoo, Zoo Negara, want him for their breeding programme.  However, there's a tonne of red tape to be fixed with the Wildlife Department.

So while we do that, Soup is in our house, swimming in the little pond we made for him.  Au ignores him, Guido loves him, and Target is terrified of him.

Soup will also be featured in my newspaper writing.  I plan to use him for feature stories showing people why it's not good practice to buy exotic pets, or to release animals for "merit" as part of religious ceremonies. 

I'll try and get some better pics up soon but work is crazy at the moment so it may take a few days.

PS UPDATE: red tape solved and an even better solution for Soup.  Will Tell All on Wednesday...