I don’t like Halloween and I explained why on my last post. But I know some of you love the festival so I figure I still need to take care of those of you.
If you love Halloween, you might want to check out these amazing cat theme Halloween products that I discovered browsing on the internet.
The artwork of Psycho Cat Collection by Jeff Haynie is so beautiful. They come in hoodies, shower curtain, necklace and many more. It’s ‘Halloween cat’, but not cliche kind if you know what I mean. It’s very creative. I like it.
On Etsy, there are a few lovely things I spotted too.
If shopping is not your thing, then maybe you would love to do some Halloween cat theme cooking?
INGREDIENTS
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup baking cocoa
3 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 1⁄2 cups flour
candy corn
red hot red cinnamon candies
DIRECTIONS
1. Blend butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, cocoa, and vanilla in mixing bowl.
2. Mix until smooth.
3. Add in baking powder, baking soda and flour. Blend until combined.
4. Roll into balls and place on cookie sheet. Flatten each cookie ball with a glass.
5. With your fingers pinch the top of each cookie to form into ears.
6. Add whiskers by press the a fork into each side of the cookie “face.”
7. Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes.
8. Take out of oven and press in 2 candy corn eyes and a red hot cinnamon candy for a nose.
I personally think every cat lover should have an automatic feeder.
They are handy for various reasons…
If you are late home – If your cat needs to be fed on specific time and you know you are going to be late home that day, automatic feeder can save you the trouble to run home
After work event – Same as above if you have commitments after work
Saturday lay in – You can set up the feeder for Saturday morning so you don’t have to wake up early for their breakfast!
Pace feeding – If your cat is one of those who will eat so quick and so much all in one go and then get sick. Having a feeder is a good way to slow them down. You can set it to open a couple of times a day so the cat can’t eat too much in one go.
Natural disaster – Even if you have a pet sitter, it’s still handy to have a feeder. What if there is a natural disaster that prevent the sitter to get to your place? Remember the Big Freeze?
Some of my clients’ houses were snowed in! In case you don’t remember how serious it was, watch these two videos that I took at the time.(Apologies for the quality. It was pre-smart-phone era! I took these with a Nokia phone, remember those?)
I am going to list out all the feeders I have experience with (except the last one, I have yet done a job where someone use this feeder) The list sort of goes with my favourite to my least favourite. It’s not a detailed review but it’s a good comparison between all the major feeder styles in the market.
When it comes to automatic feeder, my experience tells me the simpler the better! With too many buttons and setting, it either breaks too easily or too complicated to set up and you will make mistake. When accident like that happen, your cat has no food! It’s not something I want to mess around with! I have good experience with this PetMate one and this Trixie one and they are very reasonable priced at under 20 Euro and under 30 Euro (exact price depending where you get them of course…)
I have a few customers who use this one, it’s ok as well, I just prefer the dial ones above but this one is simple enough as well if you prefer to schedule up to 4 feeds.
I find this one quite fiddly. Every time when you fill the feeder, you need to deal with 3 moving parts. It’s a bit crazy. But some might like the fact that this one can record your own voice so you can call your cat to come to eat even when you are not there! A customer of mine use this to call the cats to the kitchen at 6am so they leave her alone! hahaha! So smart!!
I find this one quite fiddly as well with the few buttons quite confusing. I guess if you use it at home and you already set it up to use permanently that’s ok. But if you want to change the time, it takes pressing quite a few buttons. It is also quite confusing for pet sitter. I recommend you to leave clear instruction for your pet sitter if you use this one.
I have experience with this one as well. Once you set it up, the food just drop down at set time. I am not sure how I feel about this one because the dry food can be in the jar for many many days. Food might not be very fresh after a while…
I have customers who use these. They call themselves an automatic feeder, but I call it ‘an open bag of food’! Some cats can get smart and start eating non stop and there is no way to stop them! Unless you have a cat who is not greedy (one of my own cats is not!), you need to know you have no control whatsoever.
Same problem except this is a bit worse because the food keeps going over to the water side! Also, most cats don’t like to drink where they eat, so I am not sure the person who design this know much about cat behaviour!
Finally, the state of the art newest automatic feeder in the market! Feeder that will only open to the cat registered with their microchip! I have no experience with this one yet. If you do, please leave a comment below! I am very curious to know how this plays out!
Imagine my shock when I find out there is an album of Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers!
Since Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up soon, I thought it would be great timing to review this album!
The album is by the Irish American musician Marc Gunn. I have spoken to him briefing on email a few years ago asking for permission to play one of his songs for a radio interview I did. The song made a perfect ‘transition’ for an interview about cats!
(You can listen to my radio interview here about cats if you are interested.)
As you can see, the songs are reworded with some of the most popular Irish drinking songs. Trust me, it will make you giggle when you listen to them. It will bring you instant good mood on a bad day.
I used to play this album very often when I am doing boring admin work in the Maow Care office. I haven’t listened to it for a while now and must listen to it again one of these days.
Since I got his first album, Marc has released a few more cat theme albums, check them out!
Give it a listen on this video where Marc performed live in the home of singer harpist Claire Roche in Dublin. Wild Kitty is one of my favourites.
You might think it sounds like a fun idea, but when ‘playing’ is part of your job, it is not as fun as everyone thinks. Plus, cats under my care are cats whose human are away, so they tend to be bored and have lots of energy. It’s my duty to make sure they use up that energy, tired out and get a good long sleep until the next visit. So the ‘playing’ becomes a very serious matter to me.
After thousands of ‘play’ session, I have tried lots of cat toys in the market. And yet, I have not found any toy better than the Cat Dancer toy.
Cat Dancer toy is truly the best cat toy in the world.
Let’s see what they say officially:
Cat Dancer is the original interactive cat toy. Spring steel wire and rolled cardboard create an irresistible lure for cats and great fun for cat lovers. Home-tested by over 8 million cats.
And this is what I say:
Pros –
Cheap – The Cat Dancer toy is really a no-frill toy. There is no fancy colour fluffy stuff on it. Just a piece of wire and bits of cardboard. So the price is very very affordable.
Resilient – I had mine for 5 years. Enough said.
It WORKS! – When you open the package, you wonder if the cat will like a piece of wire with bits of cardboard attached to it. But before you know, the cat bounce on it and wouldn’t stop for hours on the first day! Honestly, this is the only toy that REALLY works, in my opinion, to use up cat’s excess energy.
Cons –
Tricky to store – It might actually be a bit of a ‘first world problem’, but I find it a bit tricky to store the toy. I have difficulty to wind up the wire and store it in a neat manner without it getting caught on stuff. I find it particularly tricky if I want to take it with me to jobs coz it always get to tangle with other stuff in my bag. But ‘normal people’ who are not cat sitter shouldn’t have this problem!
People don’t know it’s a cat toy – Again, it might be a bit of a weird ‘problem’ if you can even call it that. Due to the no-frill looks, people don’t know it’s a cat toy. If you have guests or cleaners they might ask you why do you keep piece of wire lying around. Once, I had a cleaner thought it was piece of rubbish and toss it into the bin 🙁
Availability – Not very widely available in Ireland. I know zooplus.ie carries it occasionally. Alternatively, you can order from my online store here.
As you can see, the ‘cons’ are not really cons to be honest. Plus, we cat lovers don’t really care much about any ‘cons’ of a product as long as the cats love it! In this case, I have yet found one cat who doesn’t love the Cat Dancer toy! And I have played with hundreds of cats!
So what are you waiting for? Go get a Cat Dancer now!
DISCLAIMER: I recommend this product not because I happen to stock them. In fact, I stock them because I love it and found it very difficult to purchase in Ireland. After recommending Cat Dancer toy to many of my customers and they had difficulty finding them, I took the initiative to contact the manufacturer and put in a bulk order for the convenience of cat people around me. The money I make from stocking the Cat Dancer toy covers my cost and shipping. But trust me, the money I make is very insignificant and might not even be enough to buy you a cup of tea.
See Cat Dancer in action!
(The standard disclaimer for all the products I review on this blog:
This is my honest review. In fact, I will not review something that my cats haven’t tried. I don’t receive any form of compensation for reviewing a product. I am only sharing my opinion on these products with you because I think some people might find it useful.)
As you can see from my blog tagline, I do scoop cat poop for a living. So I frequently get asked, ‘what’s the best cat litter out there?’ Oh well, may I say these people have come to the right place! After all, I have experience with almost every single kind of cat litter out there!
My favourite cat litter in the world, and also the one I use at home myself, is World’s Best Cat Litter.
When they say they are “World’s Best”, they don’t exaggerate one bit. They are by far the best cat litter out there and we have already established that I work with A LOT of different cat litters.
Let’s see what they say officially:
World’s Best Cat Litter™ is the only natural cat litter made from whole-kernel corn. That means it has a naturally absorbent structure that keeps nasty odors and smells inside the litter.
And this is what I say:
Pros –
Dust no more: The first thing you will notice after using World’s Best for a few days is, your house is so much cleaner. Clay dust no more! I have asthma myself, so the fact that there is no more dust in the air is a big plus to me. Plus, I am a house-proud person, less dust is also good for anyone who is particularly concerned about tidiness of the house too.
Easy to scoop: The litter clumps really really well. It’s probably the best clumping cat litter out there. It is so easy to scoop that I find myself sometimes scooping twice a day (I know! Why would one do that? Because it’s actually kind of fun to scoop these ‘rocks’ in a bizarre way…don’t ask). Suddenly scooping is not a nuisance anymore! A cat litter that can make people actually clean the litter tray more often is a big big plus to me!!!
Safety: Since the litter is made with whole-kernel corn, it’s absolutely safe in case your cat or toddler eats the cat litter by accident.
Environmentally friendly: The litter is completely biodegradable and flushable. All you have to do is just scoop and flush. You don’t need plastic baggie anymore, the planet will thank you for that.
Long lasting: Since you only scoop and toss nasty bits, you don’t need to toss out the clean bits of litter in the tray. As a result, a bag of cat litter can last for a really really long time. I usually order a 10 kg bag and it lasts my two cats up to 3 months.
Time saving: The ease of use actually saves you a lot of time. You only need to shop cat litter, in my case, once every 3 months!!! I repeat, once every 3 months!!! No more carrying heavy bags of litter from the supermarket, no more carrying baggies with dirty litter down to the bin. It saves you a lot of time, and time is money.
Cons –
Price: It is quite expensive when you pay for it, but it is actually not that expensive when you divide by the number of days a bag can last you. So once you get over the initial shock, it is not too bad. And as I already said, it saves a lot of time, and time is money.
Availability: Not as widely available as traditional clay litter. The chance is your supermarket doesn’t carry it. At the moment, I have only heard of a few pet shops in Dublin who carry it. I order mine on zooplus.ie
Edit to add:
A reader asked about the texture of the cat litter. It’s actually a good question! We all know how picky our cat(s) can be with little things like that. So I took a picture to show you guys.
And this is a picture for how it looks when the pee started clumping…
Hope you guys have a better idea how the litter works. Any more questions, please feel free to leave a comment below!
So which litter are you using? What’s your favourite? Please let us know in the comments section. Happy scooping!
(Disclaimer: This is my honest review. In fact, I will not review something that my cats haven’t tried. I don’t receive any form of compensation for reviewing a product. I am only sharing my opinion on these products with you because I think some people might find it useful.)
