All about MEE!

Chatzi and his evil whisker

For ages, Chatzi has had this evil whisker on his head above his eye, and we finally got round to photographing it!

Update: a couple of days later, the broken bit fell off, leaving the stub. Good job we photographed it when we did!

How on earth do you break a whisker? if you find one on the floor, try and break it… They just bend, like hairs, or at worst they fold. But they’re unbreakable.

So there you have it. Chatzi can even break an unbreakable whisker!

 

The Tail Positions of Bengal cats?

(Some of you will already have seen a draft of this article, as last Friday, I hit publish instead of draft! Clumsy paws!)

So…. It’s fairly common knowledge that with domestic cat body language, you can tell a lot from the position of the tail. If it’s straight upright or upright with a hook on the tip, it shows a happy and confident cat.

Well, I read something interesting about us Bengals the other day, and it got me thinking. (The Bengal cat is a cross breed between an Asian Leopard Cat, and a domestic cat.)

Apparently, a characteristic of a Bengal cat is that instead of holding their tail bolt upright like a domestic cat, their tail hangs low, as a link back from their wild cat ancestry!

Now, I hadn’t heard that before, so we took some pictures to see, and I think it might be true! I’d be very interested to hear about other opinions from our Bengal friends too! Do your tails hang low as well?

Chatzi has a low tail

My tail also hangs low like a wild cat!

My tail usually has this curve to it

Teego's tail is typically upright, and you can see my tail in the foreground too!

Of course, this isn’t a scientific study, and while we were photographing these pictures, sometimes, Chatzi’s tail did go straight up, although my tail never goes higher than in the last picture, and always has that curve to it!

Has anyone else heard about this apparent Bengal trait?

Have you been at the butter, Chatzi?

Daddycat accidenally took his eyes off the butter for about 3 seconds yesterday, and Chatzi leapt up onto the counter and stuck his face in!

"I haven't touched the butter"

No looking around to see if it was safe, no consideration for Daddycat’s whappy Paw Of Doom, just straight in.

"how could you accuse a face like this?"

The funniest part was that he couldn’t lick it off! His tongue wasn’t long enough!

I offered to bite it off his nose for him, but strangely, he declined.

STOP PRESS! Freya sits within 10 feet of Chatzi!

Hi everyone! Teego here…..

I’m not sure if this is real or been photoshopped, but we have some shocking photographs to show you.

A couple of days ago, there was some ham being handed out in the kitchen, and it seems that Freya and Chatzi both sat on the bin to receive yummy ham for a number of seconds!

Of course, shortly after, there was some hissing, and some spitting, and some VERY poor potty language, (all from Freya, I’m sorry to say!) But we have photographic eveidence of the two existing peacefully together for a few seconds!

Of course I wouldn’t want to be unfair and suggest that Freya is unfairly mean to Chatzi. He does look like the picture of good manners in the last photo, even giving Freya a loving lick, but in reality, Freya and Chatzi still have to sort of relationship that you might call hunter/prey, rather than loving brother/sister.

He looks about the same size as Freya here, and he probably is, and he’s still eating 4 meals a day. (That’s twice as much as us two mature kitties!)

Chatzi is a very boisterous kitten still, and we’re hoping, Please God, that one day he’ll calm down and let us sleep unhunted for a change!

The Bengal kitten in his natural habitat

 

Here we have the greater spotted Chatzi Bengal in his native habitat. Those of you who are not professional expert Bengal experts probably won’t be able to see him, his camouflage is so good.

However, if you look hard, and maybe squint a little, you might be able to make out the shape of a cat. Of course their incredible ability with camoflage comes from the “if I can’t see you, then you can’t see me” method of camouflage, favoured by cats the world over.

The correct Latin genus for the Bengal kitten is Doofus Goonius.

Obviously, all this incredible camouflage is all leading up to one inevitable outcome – the pounce and kill. Bengal kittens are adept at pouncing and killing defenceless paper bags.