Happy Diesel Day!!!

MrrrrRr Friends,

It's here: Diesel Day. Wednesday May 26 marks the anniversary of my adoption at the Sauk County Humane Society in Baraboo, Wisconsin. My people understand that the adoption was mutual - they got me and I got them - real permanent.  Alex was a bit unsure about the whole thing at first, but she's grown accustom to my furry face and lovable antics.

Since that wonderful day, I've tried to make May 26 a day to recognize the joy that all furry, feathered, hoofed, and scaled critters bring into human lives. If you have a non-human companion, this is a great day to commemorate their coming into your life. It is also an important day for reaching out to those companion critters who don’t have homes, and to the people and organizations who are caring for them and working to make their lives better.

Times are tough out there for humans, wild things, and companion critters alike. Even in good times for humans, the number of homeless dogs, cats, birds, and other critters numbers in the tens of millions in the US alone. Every year, according to the Humane Society of the United States, 6 to 8 million cats and dogs enter animal shelters. In bad economic times, the number of animals surrendered to shelters, or simply turned out of their homes, increases dramatically. The burden on the 4000 to 5000 shelters in the US is prodigious.

So Diesel Day is an opportunity for you to plan and get started helping out. Maybe you've been thinking of adopting that special furry or feathered someone? Maybe you live near a shelter and can offer them some needed supplies or a helping hand? Or perhaps you have just the right number furry friends living with and taking care of you, but you can encourage you local kibble store to make a donation, or check with your vet and ask if they donate time or supplies to their local shelter or offer discounts to newly adopted critters. Today's the day to put your plan in motion and make it happen!

As I've noted before, I am especially appreciative if you want to help one of my two favorite shelters: my former shelter in Wisconsin, or my local shelter the North Country SPCA in Westport New York.
Remember, most shelters are 501(c) 3 not-for-profit charities. They run entirely on donations – which are, for the money-minded among you, tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Giving away without regret is one of the most important things a being can do. You’ll be amazed at what comes back to you. I still have extended family in Wisconsin and, you never know, you may be directly aiding a furry cousin of mine…another future feline blogger.

Make sure you tell them Diesel sent you. If they look at you funny, send them here.

Diesel Day Eve!

Mrrrrr Friends,

I hope you all had productive weekends and enjoyed all your plans and preparations for celebrating May 26, Diesel Day.

I did some serious prowling in my kingdom. Here I am confirming that sedges have edges - don't eat this stuff unless you have some serious digestive blockage that needs a quick turnaround.

Oom put on her funny furry-bottom boots and prowled around in my brook clearing out some excess wood without harming the cool fish hiding spots and bug places...she did scare the heck out of a little crayfish guy hanging out in the water. She said she was encouraging natural water flow to minimize stagnant pools and lessen black fly breeding, but I think it was just an excuse for playing in the water and looking for Diesel Brook trout. I hung out in the cool grasses listening to screaming and swearing crayfish. A big old Pileated Woodpecker flew right over us as he coursed downed the brook path with a big old twig in his beak and we met a very nice frog...I think it was a chorus frog...

I also looked for an appropriate natural Diesel Day gift for my cat pal Alex. I'm hoping to send some Stinkies to my pals at the shelter, but I need to get hold of the blue plastic card with all the numbers on it to make that happen. Alex likes a well thought out, organic gift. These bracken ferns are quite appealing. Hmmm....

What are your plans for Diesel Day? Wednesday is coming soon! 

5 Days and Counting

Mrrrrr Cat-loving Humans,

Remember, Wednesday May 26 is Diesel Day! A nation-wide celebration for loving, giving to, and caring for cats, other furry and feathered companions, and the people who go to the mat for them.

Now's the time to call your local shelter and see if they need some of your volunteer time, a few boxes of Yeowww! Stinkies, bags and bags and bags of kibble, or just some of the fluttery, green stuff. Then you'll be prepared to facilitate Diesel Day celebrations.

If you are too lazy to do that, or if you want to score points with the Big D, support my two favorite shelters: the Sauk County (WI) Humane Society or North Country (NY) SPCA. These are both fine facilities with hard-working, caring people and would deeply appreciate your recognition of their efforts on Diesel Day! Tell them I sent you.

You might want to be scoping out where to buy very cool treats for your own feline friends. Likely, you do not have anything better to do this weekend. If you're at your local cat gear shop, ask them if they are supporting Diesel Day by making a donation of needed products or greenbacks to their local shelter.

To my cat pals out there - Spook, Dusty, Hawk, Brewster and the rest of you - pester your people, give them the big love, remind them that there are tens of thousands of wonderful cats within a day's drive of you that need their support. If they aren't paying attention, furr them. If you still need to make your point...partially digested spring grass on their shoes can really help focus them.  You of course need to follow that up with extreme cuteness to win the day.

Send them here for full instructions.

The Toys Cats Love: The Final Chapter

Mrrrrr Friends,

Finally, we reach our recommendations.

When all is said and done, we love nip. Nip makes us deliriously happy. We love our fresh nip in the yard, our yard, the neighbor's yard...any yard. And when we get our people to buy us buy nip, we think it should be organic.

Our overarching recommendation is: if you love your cats really, really, with all the BIG love, get all your furniture reupholstered in a very thick, nail resistant, wool or hemp fabric (again, we prefer organic) and stuff it with nip. I am not kidding! You would have such happy cats! Indeed all cats would love you cause you would smell so good all the time.

I myself have a nice upholstery shop right down the street. These guys are ready for anything, and I love to keep them in business.

Alex and Diesel's 2010 Cat Toy Recommendations!!!!!!

Diesel's by far favorite Toy: 

The Yeowww! Greenfish

Runner up: any sturdy ball

Alex's by far favorite toy:

6 feet of premium boating line at 3/8 inch
(especially with Boo at one end)

Runner up: Yeowww! Lemon or Yeowww! Banana

We're giving Rosie the Rat an honorable mention.

Best toys for shelter cat donations:

Yeowww! Stinkies (modeled on bite-sized sardines)

But, remember, profoundly satisfying toys are often found in unexpected places!

The Toys Cats Love: Part 3

Mrrrrr Friends,

People: every cat is different, and there may be toys that are perfectly healthy and wholesome for most cats, but, nevertheless, are a danger for the specific philosophies and practices of your feline friend. In this category, for me, are silky ribbons, thin strips of leather, tinsel and others. As a young he-cat, I thought of these as tools for charting the amazing feline digestive tract - a process Oom and Boo felt was too grueling. I won't tell you about the 2 week, 2 foot ribbon of my youth.

I've largely outgrown this position, but it raises the only rule we will promote during our review: pay attention to your cat! You can help provide them with fun, safe, and healthy toys.

A few other brief notes:

Inappropriate toys with other uses
Cat pals take note! Your person sincerely believes that the items just below, and others in this category are not cat toys. We know they are deluded, but if you play with these, I guarantee you that you person will yell and scream and try to think of ways to demonstrate their displeasure with you. This latter misguided activity - since cats are completely immune to the concept of punishment - usually leads to some reduction in the availability of kibble or stinky goodness.

It is not worth the risk. Having chewed on, played paw hockey with, and twisted myself into these objects - purely for the purposes of a thorough review - I can tell you, it isn't worth it. Stick to nip and cushy toys. I do still have a soft spot for the Apple Magic Mouse...it slides on maple flooring particularly well. Delicate handling of some of these items, in the presence of your person, might be considered cute (see just below) but be careful with this...it takes a certain skill and reserve to pull this off.

Appropriate toys with other uses
Remember, your cuteness quotient can propel upwards if you find objects in your person's world that they don't realize are toys and they don't mind when you show them they are. Any wad of paper works well, but that's pretty unimaginative. I favor bathtub stoppers or the cardboard inside of the human poop paper - though a pal of mine once pulled all the paper off to get to it so he could amuse his human, and for some reason, they weren't happy?! Coasters are on my top ten list...when they put their drinking glasses on them, don't play with them then! Any dangly thing that you will likely not break; if they are stupid enough to put a dangly thing on a door with a lock and you inadvertently lock the door via play, that's their bad. Dried beans, marbles (don't ingest!), small rocks, grass clippings...all good. Things they have put up high because they don't think you can go there...I know it's hard. If they will be good toys, and you have a cat pal at home - send her up there. If not, I don't recommend it.

Finally, don't play with your food. Keep your priorities straight.

One other thing. In our opinion, there are mutant toys. We want to be clear here...a nice furry mouse-like toy, no matter how well-made it is, should not have feathers coming out of its butt or any where else. Melding mammal traits with bird traits or any such half cat-half dog behavior is just poor taste. Say NO to mutant toys. And, if you see a bad toy thing happening...fix it. Try to engage your person and explain your concern, but if they do not act, step up. One warning though...it may be too late.

We'll have our round up and recommendations in our next blog.

The Toys Cat Love: Part 2

Mrrrrr Friends,

If you haven't read part 1 yet, off you go...scroll down. Come back when you've read it. One thing we cosmic cats know is that humans are, as a rule, very linear.

Me and Alex already laid out the first of our two overarching categories for helping humans choose the best cat toys: Action Toys. Today, we move on to the Lickitty-Sniff Doohickeys, commonly known in cat circles as LSD. Below, I've laid out some examples of prime LSD. Here, you see Alex sleeping off one of those crazed lickitty sessions with a new nip toy. Don't even ask about the car...don't lick and drive!

There are two keys to a fine LSD toy: texture and/or smelly/tasty qualities. I've covered texture elsewhere. Suffice to say, it should be intriguing to the cat tongue, but not overly ticklish or tacky. Sturdy for biting and bunny kicking, pliant but slightly resistant to the tongue.

But, let's be honest: it's all about the nip. High quality catnip can make the world a better place. It isn't our intention here, however, to go into a full review of the merits of fresh and/or dried nip.

Before we move on, a brief note about kittens, that is, young cats. For some unbelievable reason, some kittens are immune to catnip.  Have no fear, for the small minority of kittens for whom this is true, they grow out of it. Nip is a common language.

All the toys below meet our base criteria. They have organic nip in them. They have sturdy, lickable covers, since what we want to do is lick and slobber all over them to make them wet smelly good so we can rub them all over our body. These are all commercially available nip toys, but there is no reason that industrious humans cannot make these fine things for their feline friends.

Lower right you have your flax covering. Unfortunately, not the best quality nip inside and kinda itchy on the tongue. Lower left, two nice wool toys stuffed with nip. Nice, made for the cool folks at the One Stop Pet Shop in Amagansett, NY. Great store for the discerning cat. Middle bottom: a good idea that just failed - organic nip in corduroy. Just not our style...especially after Memorial Day. Very top; another good idea, somehow gone wrong...more may not be better. Little blue abstract mouse in the center is a beloved relic of a late great NYC pet store that was LSD purveyor to The Cat Who Came Before Me. She had impeccable taste.

The row starting with catcigars and ending in the lemon and the little fish - that's got our vote for the best freakin' LSD around. We love the Yeowww! brand nip and the sturdy canvas covers. The subtle shape of the banana (Alex's middle name), the action toy physique of the lemon, the neat package of the triangle that Alex refers to as her spanakopita. The pumpkin is fun, but aesthetically...ummmm. The Greenfish is, in my view, the crowning achievement of Yeow!!!! But I have not yet had the pollack. The little stripey fish is known as a stinkie, again, LSD as scooty action toy.

We've handed a few of these fine products around just to make sure we weren't hallucinating...or at least while we were writing this. Here's our pal Dusty, who lives downstate, approving of the fine Yeowww! banana:

That leaves the furry tiger mouse which is Alex's (above the flax mouse). This is her most important possession. It has a near twin. Alex sent this one to me at the shelter before I was adopted so we could meet by smell. It drove me nuts when I first laid paws on it because it smelled like high quality nip and like Alex. Alex always keeps these nearby. What's particularly smart about this toy is that you can replace the nip! It is a Smartycat toy. These folks make some great toys though several fall under our "mutant" subset detailed in part 3 of this series. 

These two categories - action and lickitty-sniff - are really just constructs to help you think. They can be distinct, but they can also crossover. Here, I demonstrate that a LSD toy, indeed my favorite toy, can be an action toy (kittens, as soon as possible, try this at home without the supervision of an adult cat):

For our next blog, important subsets of our two broad categories: inappropriate and appropriate toys and mutant toys.

The Toys Cats Love: Part 1

Mrrrrr Friends,

Let's get right to it.

You have only two more weeks to prepare for Diesel Day - an annual nationwide celebration of my adoption. Diesel Day is an opportunity to recognize the cats you love and do something special for the many homeless animals who depend on the warmth and safety of animal shelters in your community and mine.

Me and Alex have been working up a multi-part, but in no way exhaustive, review of cat toys to help you find that perfect Diesel Day gift for the furry one you love, or else a box of fine toys for your neighborhood shelter (check with them first to see if they have preferences on this front - kibble or money might be more useful). Please note that these toy ideas will also suit your furry feline on any day and for any occasion (like, just because you love them, or to make up for not getting up every two hours to open a can of stinky goodness). I understand this also works for humans, which is why I sometimes leave golden nuggets on the finest carpet in the house - but that's another blog.

First, some simplified cat-toy theory:

There are two broad categories humans can use to make sense of cat toy preferences: action toys and lickitty-sniff toys. Typical action toys - our subject today - include balls of any type, long ropey or dangly things, and compact scooty things.

Balls are very fun, should be available in a wide variety of sizes, levels of bouciness, and softness,  and do not need to be made just for cats (though they have to be safe to lick, chew, puncture, or sit on without falling apart or poisoning us).

I am very fond of my NCAA baseball, my tennis ball, and there's nothing quite like a little golf ball hockey on a hardwood floor at 3 in the morning to give your humans that special edge. The ball in the upper left is #15 my quintessential bathtub ball. My other favorite ball is the scushy leather ball third from the bottom. It is soft and made of fake leather, but very sturdy and lightweight, making it excellent for paw hockey.

The only ropey things allowed in our house for cats are either boating line (Alex prefers line at 1/4 and 3/8 inch gauge), or climbing rope (very nice at 3/16, witness the blue line below). The thinner lines, once capped (again, see the blue line below), also make fines leashes for a jessed Red-Tailed Hawk! Alex loves leather cord at about 1/4 inch width, but I love it so much that I have been known to eat it. This is also why twine, nylon string, ribbon, leather, and rubberbands are only kept in drawers in our house.

The long black thing below, is a coach or driving whip - it helps when your people are engaged in multiple odd professions. While a whip should only be employed by a responsible human intent on entertaining a cat, this tool-toy can drive a feline to distraction in no time flat. We favor a sturdy, hand-made leather coach whip with braided horsetail ends. This keeps a lot of cool horsey folks employed (good horsey people do not beat their horses with whips). But you can use a willow branch or a cane with a securely attached leather strap.... To be clear for all those probing eyes and ears online, we are not endorsing torture, only good clean, family fun, nothing kinky, please, oh please!

The last grouping falls less neatly into the action category: compact scooty things.

For some cats, quality fur or leather falls into the lickitty-sniff category. We respect that, but for us, the fine brand toy Rosie Rat is an action toy. We don't want to lick Rosie, but we understand that some cats may be enriched by this activity. Rosie is top center in the above photo. The two furry rat fellows to her right are Roger and Roberto - our names. The furry behemoth below the Rosies is a toy we love to hate. It's very special fur wrapped around a crappy plastic thing that we can't recycle, but we can't help ourselves...while not our favorite toy, it fills a deep, dark, drooling, crazed void.  And it was a gift to us from our Wisconsin vet, Dr. Mara. Leather mice, wool mice - especially boiled wool, and canvas mice (or other shapes) can all be very appealing scooty toys. We want them to be organic, super sturdy (of course we bite and bunny-kick them!) and not dyed with something that comes off on our tongues.

Wine corks!!!!! We love wine corks. At times there have been dozens laying around, all well played with. We prefer a good French Bordeaux, an Italian Barolo, a California Zinfandel, even a Tunisian Pinot.

Thread spools (no thread!), wood doo-dahs that roll and trip people in the dark, single piece clothing pins - all good clean fun.

And, we cannot move on without extolling the virtue of the foil ball. We do not do tinsel sparkle balls - remember I like to eat things - but we do love a well formed foil ball. Preferably made of red foil from dark Dove chocolates. One of the forgiving things about foil balls? When your people step on them, it won't hurt their foot and make them scream, and, even flat, the foil "ball" is awesome.  To wit:


Next time: Lickitty-Sniff Doohickeys (LSD)

Mom Day

Happy Human Mom Day!

I hope for all my mom person readers out there that you get lots of love from the one's you love today.

Frankly, I don't remember my mom super good. I remember her tummy. It was warm and furry and nutritious!

Oom's not furry but she's my mom person. She helped rescue me, get's me quality kibble, looks out for me, and she loves me big. She supplies high quality milk every morning, but it's foamy and sitting on top of the espresso which is fine with me now that I'm a fully-furred adult cat.

By the way, yes, that is snow falling in the fuzzy video.

Not dandruff on the cat...

Sending all my furry love...

High Spring Roundup! Part 2: Man-stuff

Mrrrrr Friends,

I was right, yesterday  Oom started using that outdoor cat-eater again. There is one upside...all those little pieces of grass on the lawn sure can be fun to chase.

Yep, I was playing hard core in the grass cuttings this morning. Fluttering grass blades can really get a guy going. So much so, that when Oom said she had to go back in to earn kibble for us cats, I inadvertently - I swear - nailed her when she picked me up.

I try to self trim with frequent tree-scaling and log clawing, but those pesky side nails, they do get long and sharp. A man-cat can need his claws, but I get no pleasure from drawing blood from Oom and Boo.

So a certain amount of cat-manhandling then ensued. Boo thought he should give me a catmanicure. No photography was allowed during this personal grooming event. Don't get me wrong, I'm good with the nail trimming but...a dude needs a bit of privacy!

I promised a review of the big spring events, and here's one: the great spring snowmelt and the resulting rushing brook-flow. We had a nice woman over from the Ausable River Association (that's the big river that my brook runs into just aways down from our place) and she noted that if the little dam on my brook was removed, that my brook might become bigger all year round!

I still think I should do some brook trout breeding and stocking...

High Spring Roundup! Part 1

Mrrrr Friends,

It's the peak of spring! Very exciting for a young cat out exploring his changing world. Here you see the daffodils Boo planted at the base of my Linden scaling tree. We also have heirloom tulips coming up around the big pine...deep red and daffodil yellow.

The grass is growing like crazy which means Oom will be unleashing the outdoor cat-eater machine. As opposed to the indoor cat-eater - which tries to suck a cat up and put him into a tiny box - the outdoor cat-eater is serious, it wants to chop up cats and anything else that gets in its way. It's noisy and stinky. I don't know what they are thinking letting it out and about.

I found a HUGE garter snake yesterday...he was way longer than me. He startled me and I really startled him. I'd never seen a snake I guess. Frogs are one thing...they are fun to watch and at most I will only consider smelling them; they just don't inspire licking. Snakes though, are very exciting...it was very hard not to chase his undulating S's but Oom made it clear I should not.

My newest project is Diesel Spring. About three litter-box changes ago, I was walking along in the long low area between the tame yard and the wild yard, and my paw sank through the earth and into a big wet pool. I immediately explored and yelled for Oom. We found that there's an underground world of water streaming toward my brook...we kinda knew it was there but didn't know it was so big!

So where my paw sank through? That's now a burbling above ground pool - so we're making it nice for cats and birds, putting in a few pebbles, and Boo is going to get me a couple native iris to plant. Oom says we should test the water before cats drink it, but I've been grabbing several licks every day on the sly.