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Friday 1 February 2013

Hallie growing up

Continuing on since my last post introducing this lovable little abandoned kitten who we adopted back in November - previous post explaining all here.

I've taken plenty of photos of her as you can imagine. Here she is in mid December.


She has never stopped being fixated by water and must be in my bathroom basin at least five times a day.



Still lying in the basin in the next one but she's been doing a bit of cobwebbing for me....



Onto January and below she's back in the 'cat tree' which is donkey's years old and Smokey used when he was a kitten 13 years ago! It has a scratch post coming out of the top but she tends to use my jeans, our bed and also the leather sofa instead! We always said we'd get a new sofa after we got the next kitten after Smokey who scratched it up quite a lot. I think we'll wait until after the next kitten as we intend to get Hallie a playmate this summer. 

As you can see she has quite a few toys, some of which are extremely old and well worn. We often find these and many other things which are not toys at all, on our bed. I have a feeling these may be 'presents' for us and that once she starts going outside they may be replaced by dead mice..... lovely!


At times she can be such a little angel. This is usually when she is asleep though. She has a tendancy to fall asleep in silly positions and often with her tongue sticking out.



These next photos have all been taken in the last few days. Still fixated by water but it's so hard to get a great photo of her as with flash her eyes close up, and without flash indoors I don't get a very sharp shot.






She also has a thing for attacking feet. In bed we are relatively safe with the thickness of the winter duvet and when I'm snuggled on the sofa thankfully the double thickness of my blanket is just enough that her claws can't quite get through. I can still feel the sharpness of her teeth however!


It gets tiring for her after a while, poor little thing.


And then she zonks, in any old position. :-)


Finally she has got used to wearing a collar. At first she hated the collar and as soon as it was put on she turned into a shadow of her former self. She acted more like a cat with one of those surgical collars on (we call them buckets!), and wouldn't eat and just slunk off into a corner and slept all day. I took the collar off at night and suddenly she became herself again. After about 5 days of this we took off the tiny bell that was attached to the collar and all of a sudden she was absolutely fine with the collar!

A few days later we experimented and added not only the bell but a disc that says she has a microchip with our phone no. scratched on the other side. We were absolutely amazed that she took all that in her stride and is not the least bothered by either. So now she jingles slightly when she runs but it's a dull jingle that neither bothers us nor her, but hopefully it will be enough of a noise to give the birds a bit of a warning when she goes outside.

Now it's time for her to have a catflap lesson so she can start to go outside and wreak havoc, but it will be great to get the cat litter tray out of the hall and into the cellar/laundry room because the dust that comes from that is a real nuisance and covers the floor and I see dusty paw prints trails going off into the living room.

To be continued, of course. 

7 comments:

  1. She's lovely, Mandy. My catflap is really difficult to use as the wall is two foot thick so there's a little walkway between the two catflaps! I thought I'd never teach previous cats to go through, but Claude and Grace got the hang of it really quickly.
    Sandra
    http://livingin22.blogspot.fr

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  2. Cats aren't supposed to like water............ Are you sure it's not a dyed blonde cat..........???
    A Nonny Mouse

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  3. Thanks Sandra and A Nonny Mouse (who you know too Sandra!). That sounds an interesting catflap Sandra! Hallie has two to negotiate because one goes out into the cellar/laundry and then there is the one to outdoors, and it's a big one because Smokey needed a large cat/small dog sized one.

    Nonny I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.... :-/ lots of cats like playing with water! Or are you suggesting she is a bit dim? :-)

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  4. What a cutie. All our kittens have grown up and left home - we've kept two and have two others. Four are a little easier to cope with than ten. Or even six. One of the non kittens (also mummy of some of the kittens) was a stray and we took her in when she was pregnant. She is a bit unhinged but very sweet natured and obviously is now my favourite. (She is known simply as 'Funny Cat'). I love that she now has a home and company (all four cats are lying on the sofa opposite). We had cats when I was a teenager and I loved them... I'd forgotten just how lovely it is having them around. Though maybe not ten...

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    1. I couldn't live without cats now as I'm so used to them. I'm glad you and the cats are happy and that you found homes for the kittens! We are going to get a companion for Hallie in the summer as two cats are better than one, and maybe, who knows, there might just be a little brother and sister who need homes, rather than just the one kitten..... :-)

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  5. ah yes, the feet under the duvet, bed mice for practicing on. Ouch!

    When we first brought Aragon home from the SPCA, she looked at Henry going thru the catflap. Her eyes like saucers - did you see THAT, he went THRU the door?!!

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    1. The bed mouse game is fun, so long as it's not jumping on my chest because I forgot that my arms were there and they twitched slightly! Ahhh your cats sound lovely. So far Hallie has said, fine, I'll go through the catflap if you push it open for me.... so we are not getting there quite yet.

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