First up dudes is for me to say how totally HAPPY I am about my new toy, a Tail Tickler. I just thought I’d post up this photo so you can see how much I love it. That’s me, KILLING it. See how it’s crying out for help? It is one dead Tail Tickler. Donncha vs. Crocodile and I totally won.
Also, ALSO, our goodies arrived! A full week after they were ordered! But, I forgive ‘em, because we finally got that new bed that Toni has been talking about for the last six years. NEW BED! And you know what? It totally rocks. It’s got really high side so you fell all safe and snug AND (and this is so the best thing ever!) it has a little pouch and inside that pouch is a thing you can MICROWAVE so the bed is all warm! How amazing is that? Pretty amazing, believe you me, especially when you consider it’s STILL winter. I love our my new bed, it rocks.
I was in it for ages, then I went to get a drink and Darcy done gone stole it off me, the cheeky little minxette sister! So later, when she was in the big orange bed and I was feeling a bit naughty (and okay, a bit high on cat nip) I launched myself at her and totally nearly pulled her head off! She was asleep so she didn’t even see me coming! SO FUNNY.
Actually, M&D didn’t seem to think it was that funny. They totally took Darcy’s side. Now I expect this from Paul, as for some reason he’s utterly gone on Darcy, but Toni is supposed to be totally gone on me but she was still doing the old “DON-A-CHA!” which, you know, is getting kinda old. Before I knew it, Paul had grabbed me and I was in the bathroom on a “time out”.
So I cried for Toni. Naturally. I know she can’t stand to hear my crying, so I gave it a good old yowl at maximum volume. And even though I HEARD her say, “I really don’t like hearing him cry!”, she did NOTHING about it. I was in there for about 12 hours. When I was finally released, I went over to her and snuggled against her and was extra affectionate so she felt really guilty, and SO SHE SHOULD. What is happening to the world if you can’t attack your own sister once in a while? She is my sister; that is what she is for.
I mean, I don’t even really “attack”. It’s always playful between us three. But Darcy made such a big deal of it and I ended up getting punished. And you know what? It’s just made me more likely to do it again to teach her a lesson and teach M&D that you can’t be imprisoning a Demon like me.
Still, I’ve still got all my new stuff, and my brief period of incarceration has taught me a valuable lesson: not to attack Darcy while she is in bed. While the humans can see. Easy.
I’ve shamelessly stolen the idea for this feature from both Amber and Keris, both of whom I’m very thankful to for introducing me to the idea, and beings as we have so many photos of the cats, it seemed like a good feature to start.
First up is this photo of Donncha. Paul and I call it the “iconic” Donncha photo, because it’s just so beautiful. And the real brilliance is that it was a complete accident; he was sniffing around the camera (as Donncha loves the “light box”) and I accidentally hit the capture button and this is the result. Donncha is incredibly photogenic (and such a poser) and this is our favourite photo of him, taken when he was about a year old.
This is basically just a bunch of feathers and coloured plastic on a springy stick, but Good Lord has it gone down well. Donncha is absolutely entranced by it and has worn Paul out playing with it, chasing it around and trying to “kill” it. Even when a human isn’t dangling it, Donncha is still interested in it, playing and chasing it. He loves it.
The stick is more springy than you’d normally expect which makes things more interesting and varied for the cat. The feathers are well stuck on and have survived multiple maulings from Donncha, which is really saying something. Darcy has showed interest in it as well, and for £1.99, I couldn’t be happier. Five out of five.
We did try to capture Donncha playing with it, and we have got the below video. Unfortunately it’s very dark, though you can just about make out him throwing himself around after it. We’re delighted with the product and so is our Demon.
It has come to some people’s attention, after reading the about page of this blog, that I, Austin, do not have the same surname as the humans. My full name is Austin Moody-Murphy, which might sound stupid, but is not my fault.
Firstly, Toni is to blame. Back in the day before I was born, good old Toni was utterly and absolutely obsessed with a certain rugby player name Austin Healey.
<—– That’s him, there, in case you care. Toni, being totally rugby obsessed and totally Healey obsessed, decided that she’d call her new cat (that’d be me) Austin in an ode to the object of her affections. It got shorted to Oz, and that was me, born in July 2000 and named after a rugby player. (Note from Toni: and a very good rugby player, at that).
And you’d think, really, that that would be the end of it, wouldn’t you? That, when it came to me, she’d exhausted her naming-cats-after-rugby-players possibilities, don’t you? Had I not suffered enough? Well, no. She and Paul were chatting one day about how I was named after Austin Healey, and they jokingly said they were give me a surname also after a rugby player. And before you ask, no, there isn’t a Moody-Murphy player out there – but there is a Lewis Moody and a Geordan Murphy. Here they are:
Now when deciding my “surname” (what is wrong with my humans?) they couldn’t decide which to go for. You see, Geordan Murphy is Irish – like Paul. Lewis Moody is English – like Toni. So they couldn’t decide, and in the end said “Moody-Murphy” and found it really funny, and unfortunately, it stuck.
So here I am, named after three Leicester Tigers rugby players. This was all cemented when Paul came home from the pub with three entry cards to win a trip to see the British Lions play in New Zealand in 2005. Toni filled one out for her, one for Paul, and then used the third as “me”, filling out Austin Moody-Murphy as the competition entrant. Amazingly, I won! Not the trip to NZ, but a DVD of the previous Lions tour. How many cats do you know who officially own their own DVD? Huh? How cool am I?
I’m even registered at the vet as “Austin Moody-Murphy”. I like it, actually, gives me a sense of identity away from the humans. So yes, that is how I got my name.
Store: Pet Planet Purchased: 1 x Tail Teaser and 1 bag of Cat Nip Cost of Order (including P&P): £7.49 Ordered: Monday February 25th Arrived: Wednesday February 27th Method of Delivery: ParcelForce
Pet Planet have done very well here in our first online store review. Firstly, the price of the toys was excellent, the tail teaser only costing £1.99 and coming complete with a bag of cat nip to insert inside it. The cat nip leaves were a standard price but still competitive.
Donncha has hugely enjoyed playing with the Tail Teasers and both Austin and Darcy have given them a good go as well. The cat nip leaves are certainly potent for the price and have sent Darcy around the twist – just what we intended!
The delivery is excellent; I ordered around 2pm on Monday and they arrived at 7am on Wednesday. This was standard delivery. It arrived by ParcelForce in a large, well-packed box, and we also discovered two Tail Teasers instead of one. We’ve only been charged for one, so we’re pretty pleased with that. Obviously we can’t guarentee that’ll happen to you, but it’s still worth mentioning.
Overall we’re delighted with Pet Planet and still have some vouchers left over, which we will spend with them rather than one of their competitors.
Question: Expert cat advice needed – they appear to have caught fleas. God knows how as they are never allowed out of the house. We suspect neighbours cat that roams the streets like an ASBO and Dad has, on occasion, petted. Best method of attack? At the moment we’re using Johnsons Spot On, a spray for the house, and Dad has acquired flea collars too. -Kate Davies
Our response: Kate, what you’re using at the moment is preventative stuff, which isn’t a whole heap of use when the cats actually have fleas. I hate to be one of those “you must visit a vet!” people (cos I hate them), but when you actually have fleas, you need a prescription flea killer. It’s about £7 plus the price of a normal consultation. The type I’ve used in the past is like a shampoo, but you can get spray as well. It stinks, though, really very nasty.
When they’re clear of this, a product like Frontline spot on is all you need to prevent fleas in the future. Flea collars are woefully inaccurate and anything you can buy in a supermarket is not to be trusted. You can get Frontline from a vet (around £14 for three sachets, one sachet per cat every three months) or on the internet, my favourite being petsupermarket.co.uk
Do you have a question for us about cat health, behaviour or anything? After over 30 years combined cat ownership, we’ll do our best to help. Please email: tonijkelly@btinternet.com or comment with your question.
Yes! Tail teasers from Pet Planet (£1.99)! You put a bag of cat nip (cat nip! cat nip!) in their mouths and then… you unleash the Donncha Demon! We got two crocodiles, which was apparently a mistake as we’d only ordered one (note from Toni: I have checked and we also only paid for one, so happy times). And I? I totally killed them. I chased them around for hours and now they’re all weak and dead.
I was also high on this cat nip that was also bought, so I was having mega, MEGA fun. But seriously, those toys totally rule. And £1.99? Why, we could have one for every day of the week… (HINT, Toni, HINT).
Also, I think my sister has lost it a bit. She wrote about these toys earlier but she called them MICE. What the hell? They are very clearly crocodiles. It must be the nip, which it has to be said, seems to affect her twice as much as it does me and Austin. And it makes her VIOLENT. She attacks you for like, no reason, or smacks you for chasing her tail or something. Iss-ues.
And (why, this is a long post) Toni got some runes the other day and has been doing loads of “readings” with them. I listened in on one, where she asked these runes (which it must be said, aren’t very impressive. Lumps of rock, really) “will Paul and I have children?” and she pulled out the rune for Fertility – out of all the runes, she got that one! I don’t want any human children around here, thank you very much! I am Toni’s baby and that is how it will stay, mmk?
Also, she’s a wee bit pissed off with me because the feather quill she bought for doing her witch-stuff (so glad it isn’t the 1600s, cos Toni would be D-E-A-D)… well, that quill is kind of bent and ruffled at the end. And I do not know how that happened. Shocking, really.
Still, maybe the bed will arrive tomorrow? And if it doesn’t, Toni’s still got money left over on her Pet Planet vouchers, so there’ll be new stuff soon anyway! But I really want that bed. Bah to Pet Supermarket.
My idiot brother was posting yesterday about the lack of goodies, so he was really happy today when Daddy stumbled downstairs and re-appeared with a box in his hands. “Awesome, a box!” he bellowed, “That’s a toy AND a snack!” So Mummy opened the new box and produced some MICE! Now, I’ve been hoping for some of those since a local cat told me how much nummier they are than flies and spiders. So I have to say I was disappointed when it turned out they were just TOY mice.
I soon cheered up when Mummy proceeded to fill the toy mice with catnip and put them on the floor. I had an enjoyable 15 minutes playing with them and then I went to my sofa for a nap. When I woke up Mummy and Daddy were talking about how “mad” I get when I’ve had catnip. They’re so silly, talking about me being mad when there was a load of food on the floor. I think Donncha must have knocked it over, and he even managed to get some in my fur. I don’t even know how he did that. As I say, I was asleep and I had the nummiest dream where I was riding a dragon round the flat, and food kept flying all round me.
Anyway, a big furry monkey wants to use the computer now so I think I’ll go for another nap. Bye-bye!
Emergency Vet: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi. I don’t know if this is a problem, but I thought I’d call just in case…”
E.V: “That’s fine, what’s the problem?”
Me: “It’s my cat, Darcy. She’s just eaten a load of tissue. Is that going to make her sick?”
E.V: “How much did she eat?”
Me: “A fair bit… I was cleaning up cheese sauce with the tissue and she just ate the bits I’d already used.”
E.V: *beginning to snigger now* “Is she showing any signs of distress?”
Me: “No, she’s fine, but I thought I’d check…”
E.V: “She’ll be fine, don’t worry. It’ll break down into mush. But if she does start being sick or having problems going to the toilet, call us back.”
Me: “Okay, thanks for your time.”
E.V: “No problem, you’ve made my morning!”
Later on that same day…
We’d had some packages delivered from Amazon and they’d come wrapped in an elastic band. Which Darcy then ate. So I called again, and to my horror, it was the same woman:
Me: “My cat has just eaten an elastic band. She swallowed it before I could stop her.”
E.V: “Is this the same cat that I was called about this morning?”
Me: *deeply ashamed* “Yes, she just grabs it and swallows it before you can get to her…”
E.V: *laughing* “It’s fine! She sounds like a real character. And no, the elastic band won’t hurt her.”
Me: “You know, her brother regularly eats cardboard.”
E.V: *really laughing now* “Cats have much stronger digestive systems than us, they can eat stuff like that. I wouldn’t recommend it, though…”
Me: “Oh believe me, I try and stop them. Calling you twice is the most embarrassing thing to happen to me for weeks.”
E.V: “Don’t be embarrassed, you’ve given me an anecdote I can dine out on for weeks!”
What is wrong with the twins? What happened to them in the womb?
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About
Three Cats In A Flat is a blog about all things cat related, with updates from Darcy, Donncha and Austin (our resident cats) and the humans that keep them in the style to which they've become accustomed.
First up dudes is for me to say how totally HAPPY I am about my new toy, a Tail Tickler. I just thought I’d post up this photo so you can see how much I love it. That’s me, KILLING it. See how it’s crying out for help? It is one dead Tail Tickler. Donncha vs. Crocodile and I totally won.
Posted by tonikelly 
I’ve shamelessly stolen the idea for this feature from both 
Posted by tonikelly 
Product: 
Posted by tonikelly 
<—– That’s him, there, in case you care. Toni, being totally rugby obsessed and totally Healey obsessed, decided that she’d call her new cat (that’d be me) Austin in an ode to the object of her affections. It got shorted to Oz, and that was me, born in July 2000 and named after a rugby player. (Note from Toni: and a very good rugby player, at that).
Store: Pet Planet
Yes! 
