By Navada
Shopping in pet stores is nothing new for me, but setting up my home for the arrival of two new kittens hasn’t happened for many years.
In 2010 when I moved into my own home for the first time, I bought two beautiful little Burmese sisters. Sally’s coat was sable (dark brown, almost black) and Mindy’s coat was lilac. They were both such beautiful cats. Mindy, with her longer legs, was the elegant feline supermodel while Sally was the feisty little sister with the big personality.
I made regular trips to my local Petstock for everything my girls would need – a cat carrier, bowls, toys, brushes, nail clippers, kitty litter, litter trays and food. I also bought them a very fancy cat tree/scratching post from a company in Melbourne – more about that another time. After all the basics were in place, I mostly shopped online at Pet Warehouse and Pet Circle so that items such as wet food, dry food, treats and the occasional new toy could be home delivered.
My lovely Mindy died some years ago, and I lost my beautiful Sally in September. She had just turned thirteen years old. She was my beloved companion and my adoring little friend. She came to me whenever I called her name. We shared a very close bond.
After Sally’s death, I knew I must get another cat. The house just felt so empty without a feline resident. I also knew it must be a Burmese cat as their affectionate, playful doglike personality suits me perfectly. I was grieving, but I knew it may take some time to find the right little companion and therefore I needed to start looking. There are no Burmese breeders anywhere near where I live. I found a breeder three hours away in Melbourne who had a new litter of kittens, some of whom would be ready to adopt in January. I went down to meet them in December when they were seven weeks old and completely adorable. I decided to get two little boys so they will be company for each other when I’m at work. They’re pictured above. Oskar is the cream-coloured one on the left and Harley, on the right, has a lilac coat.
My new baby boys have inherited many of Sally’s possessions. However, a few new purchases were required. The principal one was a new cat bed.
There are two reasons why Sally slept in my bed for years, rather than her own. The first was for company. She was terribly anxious and upset when Mindy died. I watched her sniff her way through the house desperately searching for her sister, and then come meowing to me as though she was explaining the problem and demanding a speedy resolution. The girls had always slept together in the laundry and now Sally was alone.
I left the laundry and bedroom doors open one night, just to see what would happen. It took her less than five minutes to come and join me in my bed. After that night, that was where she always slept – under the doona and either snuggling next to my back or curled up behind my knees. I would put my hand down under the covers and stroke her gently, and she would lick my hand. Occasionally I would wake up in the morning wearing a furry halo. On those occasions, she’d obviously decided she needed to be closer to me.
The second reason why Sally slept in my bed was that the girls had pretty much destroyed theirs. By the end, it was a shell of its former self. They’d scratched and torn their way through the fabric into the foam rubber underneath, and after ripping this apart, they ate bits of it. My vet clinic was the beneficiary of this behaviour. Even delightful cats do strange things sometimes.
On Christmas Eve, I visited Petstock to buy a toy for a friend’s puppy and to stock up on essentials for my boys. Number one item on the list was a new cat bed. This turned out not to be as straightforward as I imagined. The smorgasbord of different options was overwhelming. I could choose from cat caves, cat cubes, cat cocoons, cat igloos, cat sleeping bags, cat hammocks – you name it and it was there. I’m a bit of a self-confessed crazy cat lady and even I found it faintly ridiculous. Talk about spoiled for choice!
In the end, I found an appropriate bed online. It’s a sandstone-coloured cubby with a double-sided pillow inside – plush on one side for winter and cotton on the other side for summer. Nice and cosy.
What more could two gorgeous little boys want?
By Navada
When I began the process of buying my new kittens, naturally one of the first things I began to think about was names.
When my first Burmese kittens came home with me in 2010, the initial plan was to get a boy and a girl. My breeder Kristy lived just half an hour away from me, so it was easy to go and meet the kittens when they were just a few weeks old. It turned out that two litters had been born just a few days apart to two different mothers. Both litters had been sired by the same father, a lovely big Burmese boy with a very smoochy personality.
When I arrived, there was a fair bit to take in. The household featured two small children and a large dog as well as all the residents of the cattery. The kitten nursery was filled with bouncing, pouncing, playful bundles of joy that were so little that they each fit neatly into the palm of my hand. The boy kitten destined to come home with me was such a sweet, adorable little thing. He was a beautiful blue Burmese who touched noses with me, snuggled into my neck and purred. I noticed that he didn’t seem quite as robust as his brothers and sisters, but I assumed he’d been playing hard just before I arrived and was therefore ready for sleepy time. Sadly, I was wrong. Kristy contacted me a few weeks later to tell me that my little boy had died. The vet believed that he had some form of underlying genetic condition. Fortunately none of the other kittens seemed similarly affected.
Kristy knew I’d wanted to buy two kittens so they’d have each other for company during the day while I was at work. One of the other kittens, a beautiful little lilac girl, was originally destined to stay with Kristy to become a show cat and have kittens of her own. Given the unexpected death of my little boy, would I like to take her home instead? Yes, I would. That’s how my lovely Mindy came to join her sister Sally and live with me.
I’d already spent some time thinking about what to name my lovely smoochy little boy. I’d planned for his name to be Oskar. I liked the idea of his name being spelled a little differently to the more usual Oscar and I preferred not to think of him sharing a name with the grouchy character from Sesame Street. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to receive his name.
~~~
Fast forward to 2023 and now I’m once again thinking about names for cats after the tragic death of my longtime companion Sally, who I absolutely adored. In the midst of my grief, I began planning quickly to find some kittens as I knew it might take time to locate a breeder with a litter available. After a few twists and turns, it eventuated that the two kittens available for purchase were both boys. Here was my chance to resurrect the name of Oskar. The little cream boy was the first one chosen to come home with me, so he duly became Oskar. One down.
Now what am I going to call the other one?
I tend to prefer human names for my pets, so that eliminated familiar cat monikers such as Puss, Ceefer or Whiskers. I thought about naming them according to their colour, as I’d been raised with a beautiful pure white cat called Snowy. However, the kitten needing the new name was lilac. If I was naming a girl, I could have settled on Violet, Lavender or even Daphne at a stretch, but I couldn’t find a name in that spectrum that appeared to suit a boy.
I didn’t want the name to be too common, so that eliminated popular names for cats in Australia such as Oliver, Leo, Milo, Charlie, and Max. I also preferred to steer clear of famous cat names from literature and movies, such as Tom, Felix, Sylvester, Aslan, or Simba. I have a penchant for lovely Celtic names such as Kierin, Killian, Cormac, Llewellyn and Eamonn, but none of them felt quite right for my new little boy. My best friend has recently named her dog Angus, so while I love that name, I didn’t want to follow suit and create any confusion. I wanted the new boy’s name to feature a different vowel sound from his brother, so that each kitten would find it easier to learn and respond to his name. Decisions, decisions.
Ever since I’d made the decision to purchase my kittens, I’d started collecting names. As writers, we’re always on the lookout for good character names, and so this task moved slightly into the feline domain for a little while. Over the course of the next few months, while I waited for the boys to reach the age when they could leave their mother, I kept an eagle eye out for possibilities.
Cadbury. I’d written that one down when I still didn’t know what colour the kittens were. If one of them had been a chocolate Burmese, that might have been a fun option. He probably would have been Caddy for short, but I thought Cadbury would sound impressive when being called in the vet’s waiting room.
Archie. I quite like this one. Archibald feels a little too formal for my liking, but Archie has a nice solid ring to it. I already know a few Archies, however, and ultimately I decided to go a different way. I’m enjoying reading the recent chapters of Jim Wile’s novel and noticing that his main character coincidentally has a lovely ginger cat named Archie. I was obviously onto a good thing. :)
Adina, Lindsay, Bonnie and Freya. These were all options before I confirmed that both my cats were boys. I knew of someone locally who had a gorgeous Burmese girl cat named Bonnie and that name was definitely high on my list.
Ramsey. This felt like an interesting option that sounded vaguely to me like an international British spy.
Bailey. This is quite a cute name, but as a teacher, I’ve taught a million Baileys and some of them have been quite annoying. Pass. :)
Benji. Cute, but really more of a name for a dog rather than a cat (in my opinion).
Hamish. I really like this name, but it conjures up images of an old Australian television advertisement for Pal dog food, featuring a Scottish terrier with a broad Highland accent. I assume this was no anthropomorphic miracle and that the voiceover was actually provided by a human. :)
Monty. I’ve known several dogs called Monty, or Montgomery, and while I quite like the name, I just wasn’t sure whether it would suit a kitten.
The final option on my little list was Harley. I have no interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles, so it didn’t owe its origins to that. It sounds a little more modern and original than some of the other names on my list. It features a different vowel sound from the name Oskar, as intended, and I thought that these two names sounded good together. Harley it was.
~~~
What tipped the balance? Why did I finally settle on Oskar and Harley?
Ultimately, I just like the names. :)
By Navada
By the time Oskar and Harley were ready to travel home to Shepparton (a three-hour drive from Cranbourne in the city of Melbourne), they were already well travelled for two kittens of eleven weeks of age. They’d become familiar with the joys of a cat carrier and had shared two car trips of differing lengths to two different vet clinics in the city.
The first vet did their initial health check, microchipping both boys and giving them their first-ever vaccination. Each boy was given his own little blue passport containing his personal identifying information along with the details of this first procedure.
For reasons passing understanding, there has been a shortage of vaccines for cats in Australia. My breeder Christine let me know that, while she’d do her best to get both kittens their first two required vaccinations before they came home with me, it would depend on the availability of the supply.
Fortunately, when the second vet performed the boys’ desexing a few weeks later, they’d been able to source sufficient supplies of the required vaccine and so both boys received their second needle. That meant that once they’d arrived in Shepparton and begun adapting to their new home, I would take them to my local vet for a once-over and they would be ready for their third and final vaccination (until their boosters are due a year or so from now).
Mandy, the receptionist at my vet clinic, was delighted to hear that I was bringing in two new little kittens. She had seen me almost on a daily basis for weeks through the final illness of my beloved Sally back in August/September. She knew how heavily her loss weighed upon me. The prospect of celebrating new arrivals was an exciting one.
When I arrived at the vet clinic, my little boys were given quite the reception. The welcoming committee included Mandy, who came out from behind the counter to peer into the cat carrier and coo over my gorgeous babies. She was promptly joined by one of the vet nurses, who also peered and cooed, and a new vet that I hadn’t met before.
Her name was Lizzy. Meeting her was impactful, to say the least. She has a big personality, boundless energy, and enthusiasm for days. With her expressive features, North American accent and a tendency to talk nineteen to the dozen, it was a whirlwind visit. I know I talk a lot and I can speak pretty quickly, particularly when roused or excited, but believe me, Miss Lizzy absolutely left me in the shade.
Upon peering into the cat carrier and spending some time rhapsodising over my boys, she quickly whipped out her phone and declared herself to be a “certified crazy cat lady”. Her home screen featured photos of her five cats, and I was quickly provided with a background history of all five, including names, origins and chief diseases. All this was happening before I’d even left the reception area.
I was already blinking rather quickly and wondering what was going on here when we were spirited away into the special cat consulting suite, which had been liberally sprayed beforehand with Feliway, a special cat pheromone spray designed to decrease anxiety.
To her credit, Lizzy lowered the tone of her voice once we entered the consulting suite. While she spoke more quietly, she rarely drew breath as she told me cat story after cat story while taking each little boy out of the carrier, performing general observations, giving them their vaccinations and claiming frequently that she was going to kidnap them and keep them at the clinic because they were just too gorgeous for words. Both boys did themselves proud. They were quiet and calm and didn’t react to being poked and prodded. Neither of them meowed or reacted when receiving their needles. Lizzy took some extra time at the end of the consultation to give them both lots of extra kisses and cuddles and seemed very sad when she finally put them back in their carrier and had to bid them a fond goodbye.
It was definitely a more eventful visit than I’d anticipated, and I’d learned a lot more than I’d expected to, but my little boys were both fully vaccinated and ready to begin their new lives in their new cat-friendly home.
By Navada
When purchasing my first Burmese cats in 2010, I invested in a very special cat scratching post. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I wanted my new feline babies to have the best of everything and I was equipping the house in anticipation of their arrival. I knew that since my cats would be strictly indoors only, they would need a good scratching post to help keep their claws in check. While searching online for cat supplies, I stumbled across an advertisement for a company based in the Dandenongs, a picturesque mountain range around fifty kilometres east of the Melbourne CBD. The company was called Funky Cat Feline Furniture. This name tickled my fancy from the outset. Funky Cat! How cute!
As I scrolled through their website, I was astounded by the range and quality of their various offerings. The store was owned by a craftsman who manufactured products specifically for cats (or, if we’re honest, for fanatical cat owners with disposable income). Most of the products were made from industrial strength cardboard (much stronger and heavier than it sounds) with carpet cunningly applied over the top. The range of products included pet steps for elderly cats struggling to jump up on their owners’ beds, as well as logs, stumps, tunnels and hollows. The website also sold modular pet parks that would enable cats to venture outside in a controlled manner within a specially prepared enclosure. This would keep them safe, protect local wildlife and prevent them from roaming.
The Funky Hollow caught my attention. On the surface, it appeared to be a regular scratching post, but as the name suggests, it was sculpted to resemble a hollow tree. Depending on your chosen size and configuration, a typical Funky Hollow featured a hollow trunk, “leaves” or steps to help cats climb to the top, a cave, a shelf, and a sunbed at the summit. This gave cats multiple options for interactive play, hiding, reclining and sleeping as well as scratching their claws on the carpet rather than on other items of furniture in the house.
Another attractive element of the Funky Hollow was the claim that the manufacturer would custom design and make the required specialty item to your specifications. You could select your required colours and they would send you carpet samples to ensure that the finished product would perfectly match your décor before construction.
I was hooked.
As luck would have it, the lady who built my house had chosen spearmint green carpet for the lounge room. It’s not necessarily a decision I would have made, but fortunately it is quite a soothing colour. I chose this spearmint green for the leaves of the Funky Hollow, along with a contrasting deep brown for the trunk, and I sent these choices through to Maurice at Funky Cat. Before long, the carpet samples had arrived. They were a perfect match for the colours I’d requested. I gave Maurice the tick of approval for construction to commence.
In due course, my very own Funky Hollow arrived and was installed in my lounge room. It featured all the bells and whistles, including two “springies” for the kittens to bat with their paws, one on the base and the other on the top. I’d chosen to install a shelf to divide the hollow trunk into two parts and create a little “cave” just below the sunbed.
Upon visiting my girls for the first time prior to bringing them home, I was delighted to see that my breeder Kristy had several Funky Cat items of her own, including some Funky Hollows. Sally and Mindy would therefore already be familiar with them.
The Funky Hollow was an instant hit. From that day in 2010 when Sally and Mindy came to my house, right through to the recent arrival of my new little boys Oskar and Harley in 2024, it has been a very important part of my cats’ lives. They scratch their claws on it, they play chasey on it, they conduct mock fights and wrestles on it, they leap off it, they play with the “springies”, they curl up and sleep in the little “cave”, and they use the sunbed not only as a great spot for a lovely snooze but also as a viewing base where they can watch through the window and chirp at the birds in the garden. The Hollow is holding up pretty well, considering the daily use it has borne for all these years. It remains Cat Central.
I continue to be so grateful for the day I first spotted the Funky Cat Feline Furniture website. My Funky Hollow has definitely enriched the lives of all my cats and has quickly become a favourite playing and resting place for Oskar and Harley.
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