Spike eating his greens

Spike has not been happy with our ongoing enforcement of his diet. Dry food is being regulated although he still uses his keen sense of smell to alert him to the times I do try to put dry food down for the other three. He is close in weight to Mr Puddy (currently weighing in at 15.2 pounds) and looking to hang onto every ounce. Here you see the innocent look after we caught him chewing on some greenery in the house.

The other night hubby heard a thump in the kitchen and found that Spike had managed to chew his way into elder son's closed pizza box, the thump being two pieces of pizza being knocked onto the floor. With all the floof floating along with Spike, there isn't even a 1 second rule for food on the floor - it simply goes right into the garbage bin. Normally we don't leave any food out..and on the odd occasion we forget to put it away, we have never come back to see any bites taken or food missing. Now Spike is on the lookout for any unattended food and we do have to be more careful. Even the dog treats now have to be put away where Spike can't reach.

Doggy Picnic

When we first looked into adding a dog to our family, the first question was always whether the dog liked cats. When Girly (sable colored sheltie to the far right of the photo below) was featured on the rescue site, we were told she was tolerant of the three cats in her current home. And that trend continued when she came to us ...tolerant of three cats. As it happens, we had four cats to introduce to her and she was fine with 3 out of 4. The fourth, Sebastian, gave his thoughts of having a new dog in the family (hiss, growl) and now these two have a wary truce in most cases unless they get in close proximity.

The merle sheltie you see above came to us through the rescue about 3 months ago. She is 12 years old, has poor eye sight and is arthritic (also had to have 14 teeth pulled). She has also encountered Mojo before (one of the three grey cats living with the wonderful woman who runs the sheltie rescue) and as you can see, has a fascination with cats. She always has an eye on any of our cats who walk by her in the house here and yesterday, she was the only sheltie at the picnic who had an interest in a close up cat view.

The rest of the shelties simply saw Mojo as just another four legged furry running around the backyard.

Spike Praying to Get Out

Spike has been visiting the dry food dishes on a regular basis hoping to find some food waiting for him. We have been trying to reduce his daily food intake to help him take off some of the extra weight he has put on over time. Typically, I will put food out when he is asleep, since he won't hear the shake of the dry kibble coming out of the food container into the cat bowls (on the counter so that the dogs don't help themselves). That way, by the time he wakes up and lumbers into the kitchen there is just a small amount of food left for him.

When he is awake, he regularly comes into the kitchen looking for dry food in between the official wet food feed times. He sniffs at the bowl, sees there is nothing there and then plaintively looks at me with those sad, hungry eyes of his. (I think that might have been the cause of him getting too much food to begin with!). At this point he has given up trying to make me feel guilty and he is looking out the window, hoping to see a tasty morsel on the run outside. Now he just needs to be able to get outside and chase it down!

PS Sadie is back to her normal routine now and is coming downstairs for dinner with the rest of the furries. She still sleeps often during the day and can be found in various places around the house (just found her curled up in a wire basket this morning sleeping on some socks). I wonder if she might be older than the estimate we have...since she was originally found wandering on the street by her former owners several years ago.

Winston is a gorgeous floofy owned by a co-worker. She added her comments to the photo but I haven't been able to figure out how to add them in the appropriate places. Imagine a comment to the right of the photo which says: "note the double leg extension on the right". Then on the left it says "and the elegantly crossed front legs". Winston knows how to show himself off to best advantage...and just makes you want to scoop him up and cuddle him!

Happy July 1st

Our four kitties wearing white from the white and red colours of Canada Day (do pink noses count as light red??) are celebrating over on a fellow Canadian's blog, better known as Wendy's LOL spot. Please pop over to Wendy's blog and visit the other Canadian kitties celebrating today!

http://wendyslolspot.blogspot.com/