The Cats are 7 Today

Reading time: 2 minutes...

Biscuit and Bon-Bon are seven years old today, so here is an update of them both.

Biscuit
Bon-Bon

A few years back, it was a rarity, if either of them jumped onto our lap – now it’s a semi-regular occurrence (although Bon-Bon hardly stays there for longer than a few minutes, Biscuit is more than content to stay there for hours and hours).

They still enjoy the garden. Biscuit seems to have lost here wander-lust and hasn’t leapt over the fence into the neighbour’s for ages (touch wood!). The recent snow confused them both. Although they experienced it the previous year, they’d obviously forgotten what it was, and wouldn’t venture into the garden until we cleared a small path for them to walk on. Getting them in from the garden can still, sometimes, be a challenge. Our latest trick is shake a pack of Dreamies and they soon come running. Rewarding them with a few treats when they do come in, seems to have paid dividends and they are now 99% obedient – we’re not sure whether it can ever be 100% with cats!
It’s been almost two years since we stopped feeding them any form of pouched wet-food (apart from the treat of occasionally every opportunity, treating them to pieces of chicken. We’ve also put a second water bowl in the garden and although it’s filled from the same tap, they always drink there first in preference to the water bowl indoors – strange! They also still drink the pond water too – yuk!

A while ago, they both got into the habit of jumping up on the bed in the early hours to remind us they wanted to go out. This was disturbing our sleeping pattern as it became a nightly occurrence – a 2am wake-up call is not to be recommended! So, more recently, we’ve begun to shut them in the lounge/dining room. This has worked a treat,. In fact, on occasions when we forgot to shut the doors downstairs, they’d so got into the habit of being ‘shut-in’, they didn’t bother to try and come upstairs – who says you can’t train cats!

They both still love the cat-tower – they’re in it most days – and it suits them perfectly being able to see the garden from it. Just occasionally, Biscuit will forego it for a spot near a warm radiator, or a nice soft pillow in the guest bedroom – she knows what she likes!

Bon-Bon still does the ‘shaking hands’ trick (a great party piece) – hold out your palm and she’ll offer her paw – brilliant. She also likes to lick our fingers and then offer her neck to be ‘washed’ – they say dogs have masters and cats have servants – we think it’s true with our two! Biscuit is less animated and her party-piece is that she prefers to sit-and-stare – quite off-putting if you’re a guest and you don’t like cats!

At aged seven, I guess they’re both full size now, but we do notice an increase in every direction when Bon-Bon’s coat gets thick at certain times in the year. Biscuit’s is much less variable, but Bon-Bon becomes just one big fluff-ball!

We’re still using Patsy who runs the local Persian Rescue Centre – she does a marvellous job every six-weeks bathing and grooming them. There has been a few incidents in the last year where both Biscuit and Bon-Bon have taken exception to this ‘treat’ and have bitten the groomers, but I guess that is all part of the fun!

So, there we are, another year has gone-by – and Biscuit and Bon-Bon continue to be very much part of the family.

Keep Reading

PreviousNext

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *