A few months ago, the kids and I discovered Mushabellies. These cute little toys are round and furry and they make weird noises when squeezed. After buying a couple as presents, we decided that these toys would be the perfect reward for the kids behaviour chart. If they got ten good marks, they would get a mushabelly.

The first one was Caitie. Because she was at school, I had to choose hers for her and she adopted a cute, fuzzy lilac elephant called Farron, who trumpets and makes a raspberry blowing sound. The kittens love it and constantly try to beat it up.

Just this week, Aiden earnt his points so we went off to the toystore. Now Aidie is a funny kid, he has a wicked sense of humour, loves to make sound effects and has the quickest death fall I have ever seen. Pretend to shoot him and he literally drops to the deck *BAM*, gone, all over red rover. The kids entered a talent contest last year and they performed an air guitar solo of Dueling Banjos. Caitie had the serious guitar riffs and Aiden had the more playful banjo. I told him that all he had to do was make Caitie laugh while she had to stay serious. Well, he did ballet moves, high kicks, wiggles, bobbed up and down, the audience was in hysterics and I laughed so hard I snorted! They won the Judges Choice award. I knew that finding a toy to suit his personality would be a hard task.

And it took forever....the frog, NO,the bear, NO, the beetle, NO, the dog, NO, the horse, NO, the duck, NO, the monkey, NO, the birdie, NO, the sheep, NO...things were looking bleak. Until Caitie climbed up the shelves (thats my girl). Admittedly the staff refused to lend us a ladder to look at the top shelf so she improvised. Caitie was elbow deep in stuffed toys when she suddenly yelled, "Hey, there's alien Mushabellies up here!"

Down came the blue one, the pink one and then *BINGO* the red, three eyed, four limbed, purple tongued monster. It made a stupid sound, like gobbledygook and soundled exactly like Aiden! We had a winner...and Blapso joined our family...

Now thats two down and one to go, hopefully Conor will try to be more gooder in future (grin).

Cin.

p.s. I couldn't help myself and bought the kitty!

Exercise is Supposed to Be Healthy...Right?

After having my usual Friday quiet day; no kids, no husband, just me and the computer tasks I needed to complete, I felt like I just had to go and do something a touch healthy. I rounded up the lil Peeps, yep all three of them, and we took our ten year old Stafford Teak and our three year old stafford Nellie Noodle on a walk.

Ten year old Caitie took ten year old Teakaboo. Yes, I was pregnant with my first child when we had that litter of pups. The day I went into labour was the day the last puppy went. Talk about planned parenthood!

Anyway, I digress. Eight year old Aiden was on his bike as was four year old Conor. We had a pleasant walk, up to the end of our road where there is a clear area of Council land. It was here that I made the fatal mistake...I let the dogs offlead.

Now that in itself is not a problem. Nell is a trained dog, one qualification short of her first Obedience title and Teak will come when I give the "Get your furry butts back here" whistle. The problem was that as we walked, there became a rather pungent odour floating on the breeze. Being that its spring, I figured that someone had been a little too liberal with the Dynamic Lifter, an organic chook poo based fertilizer. Its just that the further we walked, the worse the smell became.

Eventually it was even too much for me, old Iron Guts. So, we left.......except the smell followed us. Hey, I figured it was because the breeze was blowing behind us. We leashed the dogs up and turned into a road that created a wind barrier.........and the smell got worse.

That was when Caitie started darting glances at the dogs and wrinkling her nose. It dawned on me that perhaps it wasn't fertilizer. I'm really not known for my lightning fast observations and stupidity seems to come natural to me, so I bent down and smelt Nell....and almost passed out. Yup, she had found some dead thing to roll in, so rotten that it had imbibed her with a wonderful perfume. SHE thought she smelt fantastic. I could tell by the saucy sway of the little minx's hips!

As luck would have it, I remembered to bring my mobile phone with me and called ahead so that husband could run a bath prior to us getting home. He was laughing when I walked in the house but soon started gagging when the stench assaulted his nostrils.

Having myself and two panting, hot, steamy, stinky dogs in a bathroom is no picnic....and to top it off, Nellie got the muck on her new Pretty In Pink collar....not happy Jan!

Cheers
Cin

Stitches and Witches and Bitches OH MY!

Firstly- the stitches. Two baby Devons, Jigsaw and Peggy went to the vet today to ensure that they do not accidently increase the devon gene pool. Keeping two kittens quiet is a nightmare, especially when they have their sister to rev them up. I swear when Peggy came home that she was on speed. Her eyeballs were huge and she zipped and singed and finally crashed out! Jigs was a little more sedate and preferred to sleep and then sleep, did Imention sleeping?

Witches- Evil girl cats that keep on coming into call when their babies are mere weeks old. Other evil girl cats who insist on hiding their one and only child, driving us to distraction looking for him and then insist that he needs to sleep with us in the bed at 4am!

And the bitches- Well, one lil bitch, Nell Noodle the Staffy and I have entered another agility and jumpers trial on the weekend, fingers crossed that we do well.

And finally, a note about our boy Wombat... When I go down of a morning and hang out the washing, it has become my custom to let Waddy, the stud boy, out to wander around our contained backyard. He has a bit of a sniff and a roll, sprays a tree or two, chats to himself, stalks the grass and pretends to climb trees. I will pop him into the low branches of our biggest tree and he will follow me as I walk under the branch. He then gets to explore the flowering Wisteria and get a good view of the neighbourhood.Yesterday he came flying up the yard, which caused two of my dogs to prick their ears for a second. He then launched himself into a tree and quite proudly meowed as he clung to the branches, "look at me, I can CLIMB." It was a foot off the ground and caused me to chuckle, silly boy. Today he discovered the joys of dancing through the sugarcane mulch, pouncing on wind fairies. It inspired me to pick up a spare length of rope and race it along the ground. There followed a mad dash as he tried to catch it. At one stage he had one end in his mouth and was growling at me, playing tug of war. What was funnier was when my young Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Nell, grabbed the rope and legged it, with the end trailing along the ground and a smoky streak following. Then I had one cat and one dog having a tentative game of tug, until Nell got intimidated and let Waddy win.His final burst of silliness happened at the afternoons romp, when one of my huge chickens escaped and was scratching through the yard.Big brave boy decided to stalk and subsequently pounce on a chook that is effectively big enough to eat him! Again, silly boy.It makes for a more settled stud though and he thoroughly enjoys his out time.

Cheers,

Cin

3 Fish and a Wee Kitten

Quick update.

Last Monday I had an absolute ball going out with a friend and his Dad to celebrate Fathers Day. We went deep sea fishing where I can proudly say that I threw up as many times as the fish I caught...I caught three! I generally don't get seasick but the waves were a little higher than usual and the world kept right on rocking. I'm sure that I produced the burley which made the fish come on in and get caught (hehehe).

On a kittlie note~ Our last litter for this kitten season has arrived. Pudd, our reluctant mother, suddenly turned into the Mother from Hell and tried to steal the nine week old babies into her nest. Because she wasn't showing, apart from some ginormous teats, we assumed that she was going through a phantom. Not so! On the morning of the tenth, Pudd went into labour, grunted her way through an hour of contractions and then turned just right so that I could watch her baby enter the world. The kitten took a little to come out so I got to see the little face come through the passage, poke a purple tongue at me and then, with a screech and a yowl, Leetamy Baron Von Mewsn entered the world, all 70g of red tabbiness.

The little man is struggling at the moment as he is a single kitten. He is really finding it hard to put on weight but we do have high hopes. Onelings, as we call them, spend so much of their energy trying to keep warm or find something soft to cuddle up with that it takes them so much longer to put the weight on. We have him on a heat pad with a teddy bear and just pray that he will come good.

Here's hoping,

Cin

On a happier note...

The weather is still glorious, the kids are still feral, the husband is still um...there and I'm still going quietly crazy.

A. went to the dentist on Tuesday to get his seperator bands put in so that it will make room for his dental spacer. Fang (hehe)has a pretty impressive crossbite which will be improved by this outlandishly medieval looking device. It gently (?) pushes the still developing top jaw apart by the application of a screw turning thingo. I can see me losing a finger or two to that boy! Well, the bands lasted until Thursday where we discovered he had lost one. Turns out he probably ate it but that was ok since that means those teeth are already seperated. Go figure!

We attended Smallish Bear's disco last night, complete with smoke machine and bubble blower. Much fun, especially doing the Hokey Pokey where "you put your daddy in, you put your daddy out, your put your daddy in and you shake him all about". It was in celebration of Fathers day tomorrow and raised funds for research into Prostate Cancer, a very worthy cause.

We followed this up with C and A's disco. Dropped two off, took one home. Smallish Bear was whingeing that he couldn't go to older siblings dance, suddenly stopped and said, "I'm gonna stop 'plaining now cause next year I can go to MY big school dance too!" Two seconds later, "See, I've stopped whining now." LOL, gotta love a kid who self corrects himself.

As time goes by...

Its been a fortnight since our family lost our Heart cat. For those who don't know what a heart animal is, its a one of a kind friend, who may own four legs and a furry coat but they also own your heart. Our Heart Cat was a little Tabby devon rex boy who went by the auspicious name of Arthur Bean The One Eyed Pirate Cat. He was a huge cat in personality and love. He was also only 5 months old.

Arthur was struck down by a fast acting illness whose cause has us bemused. Suffice to say, he died in my arms on the 23rd of August. We buried him that night, in a warm spot in the garden. Daughter C still grieves for her boy. We all do.

Time is the great healer, we know that, but some wounds take a little longer to begin to heal. This afternoon I will spend a gorgeous spring day tidying up around his grave, clearing away weeds and speaking softly to our boy... We miss you Bean. The house seems too quiet, Titch is lost without you and our bed is just a little bit colder.

Spring Glorious Spring! As my brother used to say, "Spring has sprung, the grass is ris, I wonder where all the bunnies is!"I love spring, it is a chance to welcome new life to the fold, the garden is glorious in all its profusion of colours, the grevileas are still flowering their fool heads off and the breeze blowing off the coast is now warm instead of bone chilling cold.Of course we love spring because it is kittening season too and we have started a wee bit early this year. Three of four expectant litters are on the ground and we are just in love with them all. Jigsaw, Peggy and Moo are all 7 weeks old now, running around causing havoc and threatening to break hearts left and right. Mouses wee tabbies have opened their eyes and will soon start to develop personalities all of their own. At the moment they are still too young to adopt pet names but that will come. Muddy blessed us with a litter of five beautiful babies yesterday morning. And being that she started at 3am, I am pleased to announce that the lack of sleep affected my naming judgement and we have... Darling Dimity, Bruce the Bold, Allabout Analise, Fergus the Brave and finally Little John. Told you I was barely lucid!

So a happy spring to everyone, I hope the season is well and summer comes in gently rather than blasting us off the planet!

Cin