How cute is this? Crossed tails and everything. Enjoying some raw egg to make their coats shiny (and get them out of my breakfast plate).
Here’s Bert’s switch maneuver.
And a peaceful resolve.
Archive for September, 2009
Awww…
September 30, 2009Cat Hog
September 29, 2009
It was awfully quiet and I was feeling lonesome, so I went in search of our kitties and found Daddybird hogging them ALL!
Toy – Monopoly
September 26, 2009The store downstairs had two cheap versions of Monopoly, so we bought them and here is what you get for $1.62 or $2.72.
Hoopoe
September 26, 2009Hoopoe birds are quite striking and I find them very interesting, but they are hard to catch on film. They usually fly away before I can get my camera out of my purse. Here is a little snippet. We even get a few flashes of his crest although he doesn’t furl it fully.
Stalker cat
September 22, 2009So, for three weeks, Oliver has been hating Bert. His freak out reactions gradually decreased little by little, but even now he still growls and hisses at him.
Oliver used to drive us crazy because he would howl piteously as if abandoned even though we were in the room. Or, he would go into another room and begin the howling. All this time I’m thinking we are going to get evicted for noise.
Now, Bert and Oliver are playmates, chasing each other around. Well, actually, it’s Oliver doing the chasing. He follows Bert everywhere, sneaking up from behind or the side and attacking. They aren’t using claws and teeth, so it really is play even though it looks like dirty tactics. Oliver is quite the “sneaky snake.”
Now, he only howls when he can’t find Bert or someone (read Daddybird) has picked Bert up and thereby disrupted the play.
Neither has stopped for a nap, yet, so I don’t know how that will go. They have to stop sometime.
Bert has always been good about playing independently and entertaining himself. Oliver has always been high maintenance needing to be played with. This is how the game of fetch came about. I’m not sure how long Bert will put up with having to entertain Oliver. It will be interesting to watch.
American Ingenuity
September 22, 2009Pet stores are fairly rare here and not necessarily fully stocked. We went to one of the “best” and they had three brands of cat food to choose from – the cheap brand we were already using (and which seems to be giving the cats digestive trouble) or two really expensive brands. The only litter scoop they had came with a litter box. There were no separately available tools. AND they were all out of litter. They had a few cat trees, but they were short and one was covered in powder blue shag carpet – way too foofoo for two male cats. They were also not particularly sturdy.
We have very high ceilings and Bert, especially, wants to be as high as he can get. He climbed on top of the dining room chair and stared longingly at the ceiling the other day. Plus, there are plenty of interesting things for them to see out the window, if they can just get high enough to see over the balcony railing.
To order a nice, big cat tree via the internet and have it shipped here is prohibitive. Finding a carpenter who could build us one would be time consuming and possibly impossible.
So, while at Ace “Hardware” (I use quotes because they have very little hardware) we found tall metal shelving for a fairly reasonable price and I had an epiphany, alright, it was just an idea, but a really, really good one.
We bought two sets of shelving.
I cut up the box to make the wire shelving easier to walk on for cats.
I was very frugal, this is what is left of the boxes the shelves came in. 
I cut up cheap fleece blankets to cover each shelf. These can be removed, laundered and replaced (unlike carpet covered cat trees.)
I added dangling toys. Daddybird gave me a hard time for putting the Star of David on a tree for Arab cats.
Again, I was being frugal. The stars were attached to some felt place mats I bought for another project.
We will connect the two shelf towers with heavy duty plastic ties. I have to run to the store to get them, so not quite complete, yet.
And Voila! The best cat tree in town.
You know what they say – You can tell how crazy a person is by the size of their cat tree.
Oliver’s day
September 22, 2009Oliver had a big day today. #1 Sores on his lips & tongue #2 First ride in the car #3 First trip to the vet #4 Two shots & oral medication #5 Ride home in the car #6 Feeling better fast #7 Played with Bert AND had fun doing it. Major progress made today. Now he is deep asleep. Whew!
In the news again…
September 17, 2009If you look quickly enough, you can see glimpses of Kanga and I in the linked newscast. We were attending the Dubai Twestival charity event for the Dubai Autism Center the other night. I didn’t realized that there was a television news crew there amongst all the press. Many of the people in the crowd are dear friends of ours here, and they got statements from some especially nice folks. It was a really fun time for a good cause, and another indicator of how blessed we are to get to know so many wonderful people in this city.
Also, earlier in this same newscast is a segment about the newly opened Dubai Metro, featuring an interview with an acquaintance of ours, Peyman Parham, who is Director of Communications for the Regional Transit Authority. It’s worth watching the segment about the Metro, especially for his part.
Peyman and his brother Mohamed are soon to open a new restaurant here called Wild Peeta. We’re really looking forward to it and will have a blog entry on it soon! Mohamed is interviewed about Twitter in the Twestival segment, and that’s one of the parts with a glimpse of us, along with our friend Mali.
There we are lurking in the background, while Mohamed of @wildpeeta explains Twitter.
Peyman Parham discussing the first weekend of the Dubai Metro
The video can be found here:
http://vode.dmi.ae/video/18A2A86DA6/emirates-news-13-9-2009
The segment about the Metro is at the beginning of the newscast, and the segment about the Twestival event starts at a about 13:49 minutes in.
This page has the webcasts of the Dubai 1 nightly news broadcasts, so it’s a good site to check back on if you’re interested in what’s going on here in Dubai.
Metro
September 13, 2009The Red Line of the Dubai Metro opened this last week on 09/09/09. It is not the line that passes in front of our apartment. That line isn’t scheduled to open until March 2010. However, the central station where the two lines intersect is within walking distance of our apartment, so we will take a ride soon and let you know how it is. We were going to do it this last weekend, but everyone else had the same idea (over 110,000 riders in two days) and we had a lot of mundane things like house cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping to do, so our ride has been delayed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8245408.stm
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/09/09/12/10348257.html
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/567523-110000-ride-dubai-metro-in-the-first-two-days
Living the Travel Channel 