Saturday 30 May 2009

Ayesha messes with Zhukov's mind

They've now mastered the art of using the cat door-- problem is, when Ayesha goes through first, she thinks it's great fun to block the door from the other side so Zhukov can't follow her. We've been trying to talk to her about this.



What makes Ayesha tick



When Ayesha's after a bird, she makes a funny ticking noise. Here she is making that same ticking noise when chasing a catnip toy which we bought for them while on another visit to Alan's parents.

Thursday 28 May 2009

Two cats up a tree

Zhukov up a tree

He's still not as keen a climber as Ayesha, but he's become quite nimble at going up and down trees.





Ayesha's ambition is to be a ship's figurehead

Chocolate gato

Saturday 16 May 2009

Havana Brown?

Zhukov's not 100% Havana Brown, but he does have Havana Brown colouring. Which proves to be somewhat darker than an actual Havana.

Zhukov, California style

Zhukov chilling in the garden on a sunny day...


This is his Rudolf Valentino...

This is his George Clooney....

And this is his Errol Flynn.

Zhukov on the bathtub edge


...doo dah, doo dah.

Wednesday 6 May 2009

The wineglass


A pre-woofer video; the cats enjoy a glass of milk in the garden.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Major drama

It's been exciting around here. Last Sunday (the 26th of April, not the one just past), Zhukov suddenly attacked Ayesha. This all looked rather more serious than a play-fight, so we separated the combatants, calmed them down and reintroduced them. Same result. A few calls to Vetline confirmed our suspicions: Ayesha was on heat. There was nothing for it but to ring the vet and see if we couldn't arrange for them to have the surgery earlier than planned, and otherwise to try and keep them in separate rooms (a difficult task when you have two active cats who are used to having the run of the house). On Monday we were able to ring the vet and book them in for the following day thanks to a cancellation.

So that Zhukov could sit on the sofa with us as he likes to do in the evenings, we took to shutting him in his cage and putting it on the sofa with us. Zhukov was happy enough; Ayesha initially avoided him, but by Monday night she'd figured out that he was immobilised, and took to walking up to his cage, hissing at him, going away and repeating the whole performance, which we didn't think was very nice of her, and told her so. Alan managed to catch some of this on video-- it's too dark and was audibly filmed during The Daily Show, but it gives you the idea:



We got them back from the vet on Tuesday afternoon. The vet actually complained about Ayesha's behaviour, though wouldn't go into details (beyond that Ayesha evidently gave her a good scratch at some point)-- evidently she made her displeasure at the situation felt. Here are both cats just back from the vet and somewhat groggy:


So, poor Ayesha's now got to wear a subwoofer for the duration. She had trouble manoevering in it at first:


But soon found it had advantages in terms of keeping her brother away from her food while she was eating:


And before long was getting around pretty well:


And she's now nearly all healed up and best friends with her brother again:




More subwoofer pics later, plus some nice pics/videos of Zhukov in the garden before The Incident, which I haven't had a chance to post due to the drama.