The girl next door

Missy is the girl next door, she's a nine year old black and white puss and she's in love with Oliver. In the morning's she cries outside our front door and if I let O out, they immediately run to each other. But the course of true cat love doesn't run smooth, their routine is to sniff each other, O hisses, M growls and they both retreat. Now that O has a bit more freedom, maybe the relationship will blossom, but at the moment I think he's a little confused.

Freedom

With the pet insurance sorted and the cat getting a little too big for the flat, this weekend we gave him some freedom. It's a hard decision, out flat is flanked by car parks, but they're not too busy on the weekend and there's plenty of shrubbery along the sides.

Oliver loved it and spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning running around outside. He doesn't stray too far (yet), has had 'words' with the neighbour's moggy and comes back with a rattle of the food tub or his favourite tunnel toy.

He's now stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep.

Why couldn't he be a princess??

We've just got Pet Insurance for Oliver. So unfair that boys are more to cover then girls, if O was a girl we'd be paying £3 less a month. But I guess it means that more claims are made for Tom cats and I don't really want to think about that as it means the chances we'll have to claim are already high. Anyway he's now insured and at 5 months old is big enough to go out on his own.

If anyone's interested in the end we went with M&S - they do life time cover rather than yearly and had a good rate compared with some others.

Houdini

Last night Oliver bit my hand as I slept. We couldn't shut him out of the bedroom as he'll scratch up the door in our rented flat, so we got out his travelling cage and put him in. I thought we could leave him in there for an hour or so until he'd calmed down and then let him out. Oliver had other ideas.

At first there was a tremendous amount of scratching, when that failed he cried for a bit and then started digging at the cage door. Within less then 5 mins, Oliver was out and jumping on the bed. The cage door was completely off it's plastic hinges. Oh well said FB I guess I didn't do it up properly. So in goes Oliver again. Within 3 mins he was out, but this time the door wasn't open. I imagine he's now big enough to push against the plastic and squirm out. Our cat is a mini houdini and we need to invest in a metal cage.

Cat vs. Tunnel - he's finally won

Since we've had him, Oliver has has luminous green play tunnel he loves to jump through. Even though it's kitten size and he's a little big, he still uses it as a nest. At one end is a little brown mouse on a string and yesterday triumph was his. It's taken him 3 months but now the tunnel is sadly lacking a mouse. I wish I'd been there when he did it, just to hear that proud little meow when he finally got his mousy reward.

Pasta lover

I loves my pasta

O has a pasta fetish. Give him a piece of dried pasta and he plays with it for hours. He pads it across the floor, picks it up gently and carries it around in his mouth and always ends up burying it under the mat in the hall. If he loses it under something - washing machine, fridge etc - he mopes until we get it out or give him a new one.