I’ve been learning the guitar for 3 days, and it seems that Freya has an opinion on my playing ability!
When I start playing, at first, she just chirps, the same way that she does when she sees a bird outside, even in her sleep! Then, as my playing goes on (and on, and on) just look what she does about 2/3 into the video!
Now, she may be the cutest cat in all the world, but that’s just plain rude!
Every time we watch this, it just makes us laugh so much!
I don’t she really hates it *that* much – I mean, surely she’d leave the room if she really didnt like it? Ahh well, she’ll just have to put up with it until either I get better or completely bored of it!
ok, so the back to front carpet idea didn’t work, and I thought about buying the proper scratch post sisal string, but the cheapest I could find it online was about £30, and that seemed too much.
Then Anna and I were visiting a hop farm and they were selling hop string, £8 for about a mile of the stuff!
Later on, we spent an ecstatic 3 hours winding hop string round a heavy 2.4 meter fence post, but the good news is it looks great, and works EXACTLY as we wanted it to!
We can wedge treats into the gaps in the string at the top of the post, and Freya will climb up, without any aparent difficulty, and pull them out and then back down safely too.
We originally made the scratch post to give her a bit of a challenge to climb to the top, but seeing her climb up it’s just a joy to behold. She climbs up the post without any difficulty at all!
I I had an idea to make a floor to ceiling climbing post.
The ceiling is about 2.4 metres, and the fence posts that my local wood shop sold were around 2.4 metres, so bingo! My plan had a chance!
Next in the plan was to cover it in that stringy-rope stuff that scratch posts are wrapped in. I did a little calculation, and figured out, that to completely wrap the post, I’d need a little less than 90 feet of 8mm rope!
So that was out of the question – then I had a great idea! I’d wrap it in carpet – cats always like climbing up carpet don’t they? and even better, I’d use the string-backed carpet, and put it on back-to-front, with the string showing so she’d have more to grip on.
It took quite a bit if coaxing to get her to climb the post, but she got there by me cutting little holes in the post, and inserting little buscuit treats in the holes!
Unfortunately, I think the holes in the string aren’t very comfortable for her, as she doesn’t really seem to like it that much, and often seems to act as if her claws are getting stuck.
So back to the drawing board, and I’m going to take off the carpet that’s already there, and I’m going to recover it with carpet the right way round so that it doesn’t hurt her claws!
Hope she likes it!
(Sorry there aren’t more photos, I guess we were so excited we forgot! There is some video, so I’ll try and post that soon.)
Since getting Freya, Anna’s developed an amazing talent for spotting Leopard print items! (Of course we’re obsessed!)
So far, in a few short weeks from the local charity shops, we’ve got a leopard print cushion, hot water bottle cover, and get this – a fetching leopard print satin bed sheet!!! Can you imagine anyone buying that new? (outside the 70s of course) It’s great for 50p, but I’m not sure I’d ever put it on my bed!
(Did anyone even have leopard print bedsheets in the 70s?)
Anyway, Anna thought she’d have a laugh, and try and do a spot the cat picture, and laid it all out on the sofa, and good old Freya obliged by lying down right in the middle.
I walk in, and see this lovely leopard print nest on the sofa, and think “I know, I’ll lie on it, snuggle up to Freya, and pretend to go to sleep.
Next thing I know, it’s 30 minutes later, and Anna has some extra photos!
One evening, i noticed that she seemed to be scratching it every 5 minutes, and I couldn’t work out why, since she’d pretty much got completely used to it by now.
I’m still on the search for the perfect collar that I want – it’s a kind of woven material, in black. Simple eh? But you try finding one of those that DOESN’T have cutesey paw prints on it, or in flourescent green.
Still, I kinda like the look of her current velvet collar with diamonds in (well, kinda velvet, and kinda diamonds!) it makes her look like a completely spoilt and pampered Fru-Fru cat.
