Christmas at Casa de Gato

This is going to be a fun and photo intensive post.. I hope you don't mind..

I'd like to start out with my Secret Paws gift.  Cat bloggers get together and draw names and I've participated for a few years now.  This year my secret Santa was Stacy from Ms. Stella O Houligan's blog. She contacted me and asked me for an Amazon wish list to make things a bit easier, and I filled it up with things for the foster kittens and a couple of things for Jack... I guess I had Jack on the brain as The Crew would like me to remind you there are seven of them in total and that Muffin is just as deserving of fun things.. (MUFFIN! get off my blog)

Amazon.. you have to love them.. nice big boxes for small items and lots of brown paper for playing with.

See that long box in the middle there, all that was in there was that wand toy.. :) It was really nice to be able to restock the kitten room. Donations to the shelter are so slow this time of year and I generally have to scrounge for good things.

I also got some lovely gifts from friends.. Amy over at Seabasscat.com baked for me!!  YAY!!

JACK! those are human treats!!  back off!  The wonderful Lisa over at A Tonk's Tail.. or more accurately Faraday from A Tonk's Tail (according to the card sent with the gift) also sent me a gift that made me laugh and smile.

Then there was the annual dressing of the kitties for Christmas.. I adore clothes on cats, but I totally respect the cats in their willingness to put up with me. Eli is 12 years old and this is the first time I have even attempted to put something on him... he has come such a long way

Yes, there was bribery involved.. a lot of it.. I like to make it worth their while. Jack volunteered from the wrong side of the door that if Eli wasn't being co-operative he'd happily step in..

Seriously, that boy will do ANYTHING for food.. and love and attention.. he's "freakin awesome'. Muff and Fleurp are also highly food motivated so it went fairly well.. and it made me smile.

I did go down and tried out a few outfits on the kittens.. but we are all ready pretty photo intensive at this point, so I guess we are going to have a part two.

Trip to Kansas, Day Two: Part one

So it started out with breakfast, and then a trip over to PetSmart to get a photo of Lowenstein with Santa..

We were early, so we walked around a bit. Amy brought her husband Lee with us and at some point the suggestion of getting a harness and leash for Lowenstein was brought up..

I think he liked having the freedom to walk around. He was much more comfortable being there than a lot of cats, but even so he was still getting a bit overwhelmed, so being able to explore seemed to help calm him a bit. That and he liked the fish..

Finally it was time for Santa. Oddly they didn't have anyone taking photos.. it was a BYOC kind of thing. I do have to say the staff was very nice about the whole thing, but that Santa.. well he seemed totally disengaged. He held Lowenstein, but he did nothing to try to calm him, or make the situation work.

Even in this second photo you can see he is off looking at something else entirely. *shrug* guess they just weren't expecting any cats (I suppose rightly so). I have about 20+ photos and these were the best.

While we were there I was able to surprise Amy with a gift card to PetSmart. I had won one and when I went to my local one I couldn't find anything that I wanted to spend money on. They don't carry food I was interested in feeding and I didn't need anything else. I thought it might be fun to either spend it on Amy or use it to buy something for the shelter. Well while we were there I saw they had a cat tree on a daily sale. I pointed it out to Amy and she said she needed one but financially it wasn't going to happen right then. So I pulled out my gift card and not so slyly put it in her hand and then over acted quite shocked that it was there and said her Secret Paws must have just shown up. (I had laughed so hard when I got the email telling me I had been paired with Amy). I originally thought it was $50 but it turned out to be $100! Ah well, I wouldn't have wanted to spend it any other way. It made me happy to see the look on her face and to know that Harvey Lowenstein and Evelyn are climbing all over my gift card ;)

Anyway.. She felt a wee bit uncomfortable since the Santa Paws had a much lower price cap (and I had bought her gifts in case she didn't 'need' anything at PetSmart or heaven forbid I couldn't get to one) so I told her that I'd just accept the fact that she was going to pay my "room and board" while I was here and not quibble when she offered to pick up my checks. I must say I think I got the better end out of the deal..

We then did a little shopping and met up with Lisa. As I mentioned I'm kind of a fan of Faraday and Maxwell and Allie. When I was invited I had hopes of going over to see them, but I didn't want to be pushy and say "HEY, I NEED TO SEE YOUR CATS!" (cause I'm pretty sure that's rude to some people) (btw, not to me.. say it to me any time) and wasn't I thrilled when we headed over to her house..

Now in my head I'm all fan girl. I mean serious fan girl.. like squeeing all over the place, jumping up and down feeling uber silly about meeting a couple of cats.. (cause you know.. society) but I didn't care..

And they didn't disappoint..

Yes, I got to see the "roadster"

oh my cod.. do these fangs not kill you dead??

LEG DANGLE!!

SQUEEEE!! I'm TOUCHING HIM!!!  *faint*

And he likes it!!

I so need to invest in a good flash.

Allie kind of disapproved of my fangirl aura.. which was a little sad, but that's OK. Evelyn was too ;) She was probably also annoyed at all of the flashing coming off me. I tried to put the camera away several times but I kept picking it back up.. (I was such a tourist.. I felt like should have had tube socks and sandals on)

I ended up taking over 1000 photos in December, so to be fair to you, I'm going to split this up even further.. Day two part two coming up..

Secret Paws 2013

Last year I stumbled upon a "secret Santa for cats' called Secret Paws.  This year I was amazingly lucky to end up getting Amy of SeabassCat whom I was about to go and visit.. and I was lucky enough to be gotten by The Critters in the Cottage.  The gift arrived a while ago but I had way too much going on to give it the proper respect, so I decided to wait until Christmas.

They were very generous and The Crew was well pleased.  I didn't have the heart to tell them they weren't going to keep it all and that they would end up sharing with me and the foster kittens.. They won't even notice they don't get to eat the chocolate and that some of the toys will mysteriously disappear since they got a few of their own from myself and my husband (which I'll share with you later)

With out further ado..

Secret Paws 2012

My gift from Secret Paws arrived much earlier than this, but I was hesitant to open it.  I wanted to save it and savor it, so it sat there with it's promises of goodies and I smiled every time I looked at it...

Now that Christmas has passed, I thought it only fair to the people who sent it to me to open it up and share it with my kitties and with all of you.  It came from Charlemagne, Tamar and Mal and The Crew wants to send a great big THANK YOU!! for individually wrapped presents..

Fleurp snagged Eli's giftie

so I snagged it back, unwrapped it and gave it to him..
you can see how well that worked out...

What?  I am being good!!  really!!
(so I tossed her the one marked Fleurp)

the individual wrapped gifties minutes the ones off being played with.
I love how Kit's is sparkly

The "stocking" with toys was in the red and green paper.  More mice were in the striped paper that said "For all of you" and a bag of Temptations was in the blue paper.. once the mega bag of Temptations was out, all bets were off and as you can see the photo shoot ended there :)

Thank you again Mal.  It was so much fun and very much appreciated.