Nap Time!

There was a time in my life when I never would have thought naps would be so important! Naps are for babies - maybe?! As I get older, I no longer sleep great at night. There's lots of tossing and turning, sweating, thoughts running through my mind - all ensuring that I get a crappy night of sleep.

Add in a few cats that all want to sleep in bed with me and Gene. We only have a full-sized bed (love our old house, but the rooms are kinda small)! I usually end up with a tiny sliver of the bed to sleep on, sandwiched between Gene and a cat. It's a good thing I don't have a fear of falling out of bed. So, the crappy sleep I get at night leads me to a midday nap when my schedule allows. Long or short doesn't matter - a nap is a nap, I get the best sleep during my nap!

Once I'm done eating, I open my book, he hunkers down a little more, and I slowly fade into dreamland. A truly good nap time will find Roughy and me lightly snoring and drooling midday. Do we care how long we get to snooze? Not particularly! If I leave and he wants more snoozing, he just turns his head when I leave. Otherwise, he gets up and continues on with his cat day.

Just like those kids who get cranky when nap time is missed or cut short - that happens to Roughy. If I am house-sitting and don't have time to come home for our nap-time, he acts out. He will bully the other cats - hitting, biting, and chasing them. Why?!? It's not like they did anything; he's just cranky and has to take out his aggressions on one of his siblings. While that gets his aggression out, he still has to test the boundary line. We don't love it, but he gets some leniency of what he is allowed to do that is usually forbidden. Like sleeping on the counter in the kitchen. That's a hard no, but Gene decided to let it slide as Roughy will do spite peeing in the house. So, sleeping on the counter versus peeing in inappropriate spots - go ahead, sleep on all the counters Roughy!

He also has this not-so-cute thing he does: he sits on the dining room table (which is by the front door) when people come in. So, automatically, people pet him. Which is fine - but he's slightly temperamental on a fully napped day, so imagine on a no-nap day or week! He has swatted at people or gone to bite. Recently, a friend came over, he was on the table ready for pets. She touched him, he bit her finger. Immediately - no pet actually got completed. As if that wasn't enough, he swatted her travel cup off the table. Which, honestly, is a first for him. None of our cats have blatantly knocked things off the table like that. Usually when they are playing, this was a true spite knocking off the table.

We just finished a week of no nap times. I was home for 5 minutes and leaving with my friend, and he knew it. I had one more night of house sitting - he was done waiting for naps. He is a truly spoiled cat. The very next day, I ended up taking an unplanned 4-hour nap. He stayed the entire time. Usually, we nap for no more than an hour. We truly made up for lost time.

So, Roughy and I both encourage you to pencil nap time into your day! Do it with a furry friend or solo, whatever works for you! Naps are great and not just for young kids!

Till our tails cross again,

Mel

Social media, followers, and making money!

The cat introductions are done! Phew, that was much harder than I expected it to be. My older cats were much easier to introduce as they have fully developed their size and personalities. The kittens are still in the kitten phase of figuring out just what their personalities will be, what they will be best known for, and what they contribute to the pecking order.

I didn't introduce the two cats that we had, one because I just don't have it in me to write about a very special cat - Peppermint. She is watching over me, amidst the chaos of the 12 cats in my home, and probably yelling that it's all gone to hell in a basket. She truly was the matriarch of our house, both for humans and pets. Without her, the cats have decided it's every cat for themselves, going straight to chewing wires, playing with things that are not meant for cats, snoozing on the forbidden counters, having horrible litter etiquette, and more! I promise one day there will be a more detailed post about the most precious cat who left a big impact on my life.

The other cat that didn't get introduced is Frannie. I'm more likely to write about her sooner (I'll have to dig deep for some of her best pictures!). She was a cat that, depending on who you talked to, was staying permanently or temporarily at our house. The husband was on the temporary train while I was full steam ahead that she's a permanent cat in our household. I lost the battle on her living situation. (She is in a GREAT home now.)

Needless to say, both of them had amazing personalities, and you truly had to be on their level. Frannie was not a favorite to anyone except me, Peppermint was loved by all because of so many reasons! Now, what do I really have to write about for today's blog?!? I really don't know, other than it's the height of summer, it's been killer hot out, I've been crazy busy working and pet sitting. I started a TikTok channel - WTH was I thinking, added another thing to my life that takes a good amount of time! All in all though, it kinda fits right in with the blogging side of my life right now.

Find the tiktok videos here: https://www.tiktok.com/@purrfectdozen

- and is solely about the cats (all 12 of them!). While some of them have been more video-ready, a few have been a little less inclined to come out. Hello Hazel, Ash, Tanner, Peaches. Pretty much in that order from least ready to more ready. Bear is the one kitten who is happy to come out for videos and photo shoots. Now it's up to me to catch them being insanely cute or infuriatingly bad on camera. Harder than one might think. Remember - cats do what they want - no matter what we want them to do.

A lot of times, they are doing cool things, cute things, or just camera-worthy things, and one of two things happens. My camera is nowhere near, or I'm actively being held down by another cat and can't catch whatever worthwhile thing is happening! I make do with what I can catch, hope my husband sends me cute stuff from when I'm not around, or is willing to catch pictures when I physically can't.

Other than being super active on TikTok, I am uploading those videos and photos to YouTube, albeit a bit slower than I should be. Find them on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@purrfectdozen

It's strange how I feel like I'm staying current with all the social media and newest technology, yet I can see the generational gaps in where people are going for entertainment and social media. That's how I ended up creating a YouTube Channel. I only knew less than a handful of people who use TikTok, but more who use YouTube. I also ended up creating the YouTube channel because my husband and several close friends don't use TikTok but said they would watch the videos on YouTube. I'm looking straight at Jim and Barb who said, "Put them up there, we will watch!" Guess how many times they have watched the videos?! You got that right, barely any.

This does go to show that a get-rich-quick scheme of becoming internet famous, whether by blogging, TikToking, YouTubing, or Twitching, is not really as quick as everyone makes it seem. There are TONS of things that have to happen for you to even get remotely close to making money. I'm still struggling with it on all the social media outlets. I have a better insight, but it's not quick or easy. It's time-consuming, hard, and maybe not quite worth it if you aren't a person who stays home and does absolutely nothing else with their life.

While I'm still plugging away and secretly hoping one (or all of these things) takes off for me, I'm still going to keep my "paying" jobs.

So to all my peeps - share all of the sites! To make it super easy - just copy and share the links below! My #purrfectdozen crew thanks you for helping make them famous!

Blogsite: https://www.lovecatsandeverything.com/

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@purrfectdozen

Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@purrfectdozen

Etsy: https://lovecatseverything.etsy.com

Youtube (Live readings/book club!): https://youtube.com/@melsbookcorner

Till our Tails Cross Again

Mel

Finicky stomach's & weird allergies

The trials and tribulations of having 12 cats varying in ages ensure that there's never a dull moment. Just a small recap: we have 1 diabetic cat - Jasper - who resides in the large bathroom, 1 FIV+ cat - Dobby - a free roamer of the entire house, 2 cats with kidney disease - Smokey & Rollie - free roamers of the entire house, and 1 cat with chronic bronchitis/allergies - Vera - also a free roamer of the entire house. Doesn't seem so bad in writing, right?! Those are just the ones with some sort of health issue!

Jasper - he's on a controlled diet - a set feeding schedule with a set amount of food throughout the day. This came about for 2 primary reasons - diabetics need to be mindful of weight/carbs/sugars (yep, still applies in the feline world!) and he turned out to be a fast eater who would wolf down his entire serving in a mere few seconds and immediately throw it all back up. Out the door went a simple twice-a-day feeding. Enter the greatest thing in technology - an automatic feeder! It goes off on a schedule - based on what we programmed it to - and only a set amount of food at each serving. It easily holds a little over a week of food, has a battery backup if the power goes out! So he now gets several mini feedings throughout a 24-hour period. Keeps his sugar levels better maintained, and now no fast eating to the point of getting sick. He still eats really fast sometimes - but no more getting sick because he has time to process each tiny meal he gets. He gets an appetizer of chicken squeeze up in the morning with his probiotic mixed in - he LOVES that and will wait at the door for it, calling out if he thinks we are late with it.

Enter the Siamese Rollie & Smokey - kidney disease - this changed some things in our house. Mainly, it put us at a higher price point for food - that is now being fed to 11 cats. Just to give you a picture - I used to buy a 22 lb bag of cat food (healthy weight/hairball control) every 2ish weeks for 11 cats. So, 44 lbs of cat food in 4 weeks at a more reasonable price of about $46 per 22 lb bag. Now we feed them Renal support dry cat food - 11 lbs for $69.99 once a week. So, I used to spend $92 a month for 11 cats and now I spend $279.96 a month. (Yes, that makes me absolutely sick to my stomach!!) That's just the dry food - it doesn't include the wet food.

Wet food brings its own set of challenges. Let's start with prescription renal food -

also expensive, that is for Rollie & Smokey. In my house, crack a can of anything and ALL the cats come running for wet food. So I have to buy prescription and non-prescription - just to save some money. Depending on where I get it, wet food goes on sale - so long as it's not prescription. Enter the million-dollar bathroom cat Jasper. He is literally the anomaly here - in a perfect world he could eat the non-prescription food, but he is allergic to the fish flavors, fish additives, fish oil, salmon oil. I know, shocking - a cat allergic to all things fish-related. Now, take that allergy to the wet food aisle, read a few labels of the Beef, Beef/liver, Chicken, and any other non-fish flavored food. Get just a few ingredients in and you'll find there is some sort of fish/fish oil additive. No big deal, right? It's not like that's the number one ingredient. Jasper would like to tell you in no uncertain terms - It's a huge deal. He will eat the wet food because he absolutely LOVES the wet food and it truly is a treat for him. But no sooner does he eat it, and he has emptied his stomach from all the food he's eaten in the last 12 - 24 hours.

So we have:

Rollie & Smokey - Prescription Wet Food - for Kidney Disease

9 other cats that can eat non-prescription food

Jasper - non-prescription wet food - but it can have no trace of fish or fish oil.

Let's also stop and ponder - wet food has a higher water content. But my wacky cats like their wet food to be more of a soupy mix that tastes like wet food. I'm thankful for that as it makes the wet food spread a little farther around!

We have entered the stage of crazy cat owners who now have food containers labeled for each set of food specifications. All to make feeding wet food easier (I can mix it with water and have it ready for doling out!) This also ensures that any guest in our house doesn't attempt to eat anything from those containers.

So, if feeding 12 cats seemed easy while they are all rubbing on your legs and crying while you scoop out the 12 bowls, add in all those extras who can have what, who needs what, etc. No walk in the park for sure! There have been days when I would think, just don't give Jasper the wet food, but he sits at his door and cries because he most certainly heard the cat food can top pop.

The last two pieces of the wet food headache - Smokey doesn't love to eat when I put out the food, so it's hit or miss if she's getting what she needs from the prescription food. Hazel - she's adorable for sure, but absolutely prefers to eat on the step, partially hidden by the wall. It's a safe spot for her, I guess, although the other cats do come and eat from her bowl - so it's just safe from the humans!

Till our Tails cross again,

Mel