Cat Hygiene Taken To A Totally New Level - Part 3

N.B. Continued from Cat Hygiene 101 - Part 2 and Difference Between Cat Cleanliness and Cat Hygiene
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Thanks to thefluffies I now have an idea what level of hygiene I should take my cats to --- they'll have to learn to eat with fork, chopsticks and spoon. And training Yin to wash her paws only at meal times, not each time after she buries her waste! 

Cat Hygiene 101 - Part 2

N.B. Continued from Difference Between Cat Cleanliness and Cat Hygiene
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A cat is clean, but not exactly hygienic. That said, a cat can be forgiven for being less than hygienic. After all, we humans didn't start to concern ourselves with hygiene until the 19th century. And today, two centuries later, there are still a number of elderly folks who might think hygiene is over-rated.


Now, back to cats and hygiene, or the lack of it. In my earlier post I forgot to mention that Yin not only washes her paws after she buries her waste, but likes to dip her paws into the water bowls and splash the water around, producing a fountain effect. The result is a damp wall and wet floor. On some level I think she knows that is naughty as she always stops the minute I catch her in the act. 


To top it off, she also has a rather unusual way of drinking water --- she'd scoop up the water with her paw and drink from it. A friend said I should have given her a straw while another suggested that I give her a spoon.

Difference Between Cat Cleanliness And Cat Hygiene

Cats are notoriously finicky when it comes to cleanliness. They are obsessively clean. And if they're not, then it's time to take them to a 5vet, for that is one sure sign that something is not right, health-wise.

Yin Yin is no exception. In fact, she takes cleanliness to another level. After she buries her waste, she would proceed to the nearest water bowl and wash her two front paws, one at a time.

That's great, right? Well, not really. First, she doesn't agree with my view that she should dry her paws on the rug I place beneath the water bowl. She prefers to lick-dry.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, I haven't been able to train her to separate the drinking bowl from the paw-washing bowl. She does not discriminate and would wash her paws in whichever bowl she fancies at that point in time. 

And finally, her chief eunuch Blackie would come and empty her washing bowl for her, or at least, try to, by drinking it up!!!!!!!!!  He understands the word "dirty", I've taught him a few simple vocabulary from young, but he doesn't understand why "dirty" is not applied to the same water bowl all the time.

For now, I've drafted a simple "Cat Hygiene 101" lesson for both of them, with illustrations and examples. Hopefully, they'd be able to understand it! Any contribution (in the form of ideas) to the lesson would be greatly appreciated.  :)

Night by Elie Wiesel

Books. Some are hard to put down. Some make you laugh. Some make you cry. And then there are some that make you think very deeply. Night by Elie Wiesel falls into this last category.


Although the first edition of this book was published in September 1960, and Oprah Winfrey selected the book for her book club in January 2006, hubby and I only came to know of this book a week ago by chance.


We were in our room at Resorts World Hotel at Genting, watching Vision Four, an in-house video channel, and it was showing an old documentary of Elie Wiesel giving an acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize for this book.


The book is about the author's experience in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschtwitz and Buchenwald at the height of Holocaust and toward the end of the Second World War. He was sixteen years old when the US Army finally liberated Buchenwald.


What got me thinking deeply was that in the book, every human value, every moral was destroyed. Would anyone dream of abandoning their parent, whom they had clung to tenaciously  for the past one or three years to avoid being separated suddenly wished that the parent would die so that they would be free to have a better chance at survival? Or would a loving child jump on the father and beat him to death so as to grab that piece of bread crumb from him? Would a child who would retaliate against anyone who so much as laid a finger on his father lie quietly in a bunk above the same father and listened to him being beaten to death by the soldiers for fear of attracting the blows upon himself?


These are not the unfilial, rebellious children. But circumstances, or to be more exact, the horrors of the concentration camps have changed them. The human survival instinct kicked in. It became a "each man for himself, there is no fathers, no brothers here".


I kept asking myself, would I become like one of them, too, if I am in that situation? I don't know, since I haven't been through any suffering. I really hope I can rise above that selfish human instinct to survive, but I sure hope I don't live to experience it to get the answer.


The book was written in an easy-to-read narrative, and if I have a Book Club like Oprah Winfrey, I too would select it for my club and encourage everyone to read it. If nothing else, at least the reader will learn something: When there's a conflict, we must take sides. To remain silent is not being neutral. Being silent is condoning the actions of the oppressor and further victimising the oppressed. The world was silent, and in being silent, a monster (Hitler) came into being.

Introducing Maneki Neko

I came by this photo through honest means, but am 'stealing' it by posting it here. It's just too cute not to be shared. This is Maneki Neko....aint she cute?  ;)

Pantai Morib

Last Sunday hubby and I decided to take a 90 minutes' drive to Pantai Morib. There are two routes to Pantai Morib, although there may be others that I'm not aware of. One is via Klang while the other is via Banting. We took the latter as Klang is a more-travelled route for us, and would not have offered as much 'adventure'.

A seaside town in the Kuala Langat district, Pantai Morib's shoreline spans about 3km

Seagulls and their eggs nest....

In the early afternoon, at low tide, the water edge of the sea is about 500 or 600 meters away from the shore. Many visitors walked out to the water edge. Some came back with live snails and baby crabs in their palms while others collected seashells.

A visitor paying homage to Hitler? No, hail Hitler it is not. It's just hubby flying a kite. The kite is right behind and above his head!! LOL.


You see, Pantai Morib is windy enough to fly kites and many kite vendors sat under the casuarina trees selling kites. Hubby got one for RM3. He managed not to get it entangled in the tall trees, unlike some, and brought the kite home proudly as a souvenir. He plans to fly it from our balcony one day! *gasp*

The water ripples reflected under the setting sun as the tide returned to shore, at around 5:45pm.

People were seen rushing back to shore, while some were still caught in what had become the middle of the sea. 


We left at about 6:30pm, and had a lovely dinner at Banting.

Ikea Let Loose 100 Cats In A Store In England

I love all those cats in Ikea! Story source: http://gizmodo.com/5634257/ikea-let-loose-a-herd-of-100-cats-into-store-to-see-what-happens

Cats Cat-together (Cats Get Together)

Look what I found when I walked into my room just now.....a little cat-together. 

Are they having a conference? A debate? Or some private time? Whatever it is, it must be important for them to remove themselves from my presence to sneak into the bedroom to be by themselves. Should I feel hurt that I wasn't invited to join the party?

Sayang's Second Week @ His Home

It has been almost two weeks since Sayang moved to his new home with the Chongs. And he sure looks like he has put on some weight. His coat also appears to be thicker. (Thanks for the photo, Mrs Chong!)

Sayang very tired and sleepy after spending the whole afternoon with 10 teenagers yesterday

His favourite spot outside of his room, the dining chair.

Mrs Chong tells me that he has developed some cute little habits. When he wants some attention and affection from his family, he'd go up to them and drop on his side (yes, drop, not lie down) for them to stroke him. He'll be rather vocal until they stroke him.


He was shedding a lot while in Jimmy's & Angela's shop, and they have been giving him the evening primrose softgel pill. They showed Mrs Chong how to give this pill to Sayang. But what the Chongs discovered by chance is that they don't even have to 'force' open his mouth to drop in the pill. They discovered that if they just put the pill on the floor he'll eat it up! And he loves his hot baths! How I wish my two cats will co-operate like this! It'll make feeding them their pills & bathing them so much easier.


Also, another discovery is, Sayang's favourite food is not fish, but chicken fillet. Looks like I've been buying him the wrong food when he was a stray at Selayang, LOL.


He's definitely much happier, his family is very happy with him, and I'm happy, too.  :))


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related post: http://blackie007.blogspot.com/2010/08/sayang-in-his-new-home.html

Selamat Hari Raya Adilfitri

Wishing all my Muslim friends Selamat Hari Raya Adilfitri and have a safe trip if you are going to balik kampung. 

Is This Our 1Malaysia??!!

I was horrified to read the news that two Malaysian men of Chinese ethnic were attacked when they went to watch the Merdeka eve fireworks for simply having Chinese ethnicity. What is happening to our nation? The perpetrators are teenagers, why are they harbouring so much hatred for their fellow-countrymen? 


The news report : http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/fmt-english/news/general/9834-two-beaten-up-in-merdeka-eve-racist-attack

The personal account of the victim in Facebook :  http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=432073840741&id=586500176

Bukit Merah A Must For Animal Lovers

Over the weekend we took a 3 days/2 nights trip to Bukit Merah Laketown Resort, an eco-tourism destination that fronts a 7000 acres of fresh water lake and houses the only conservational Orang Utan Island in Peninsula Malaysia. It also has an Eco Park with a platform enclosure where you can walk around and interact with the animals there.

Our room @ Laketown Hotel

Waterfront Chalet

Traffic was light on the highway, and we arrived at three-ish on Saturday. We had set out late, and compounded to that we had to make several stops along the way, caused by an iced coffee taken at an earlier rest stop not agreeing with my tummy.


After we checked-in, we had a late lunch at Cafe Le Lac. Hubby ordered a beef sandwich while I had Mee Goreng. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the food is rather good, especially since our complimentary breakfast for the next two mornings would be at the cafe. And the chef didn't fail to deliver for the next two days. You see, it has been my experience that aside from KL, Penang and JB, chefs at resorts or hotels in other parts of Malaysia do not possess too much culinary skills.  

(I forgot to take photos of the buffet breakfast)

That said, despite the culinary skills of the chef, a couple of guests chose to eat nothing but nasi lemak for each and every meal. They must have bought the resort's promotional package.


At the Orang Utan Island, we discovered hubby's long-lost cousins, Uncle Mike, Adam, Sonia and a baby in the Infant Care Unit. Do you see the family resemblance?  :D

Uncle Mike (Adam and Sonia were up in the trees)

Baby orang utan in a diaper and hugging a bolster in the Infant Care Unit

The Eco Park is probably one of the most enjoyable part of our visit. While exploring the reptile park, I bumped into an iguana on the loose. Needless to say, I was both horrified and delighted at the sight of such a beautifully ugly creature, which took into its head to advance on me even as I backed away.... 

I also learnt something else.....parrots are intelligent, great in sports like football, basketball, bowling and cycling while otters make excellent trash collectors. Below are a couple of my favourite parrot tricks.

You might want to check out the links below:
For a fictitious promotional package  >>> Tongue-in-cheek promotion
For room rates and other info >>> http://www.bukitmerahresort.com.my/

Nasi Lemak Fest @ Bukit Merah Laketown Resort

Calling all Nasi Lemak fans. To cater to some Malaysians who want to eat the same thing, namely Nasi Lemak, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the hotel is now introducing a special Nasi Lemak Promotion Package.


For only RM480 nett for 3D/2N, you get the ubiquitous nasi lemak for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And if you'd like nasi lemak for tea too, just add another RM18 per pax. Still haven't had enough of nasi lemak? Don't worry, there's always supper......more nasi lemak....


Money back guarantee - we guarantee every meal will be identical.....


Disclaimer: This is a purely tongue-in-cheek, satiric post resulting from my observation of  a couple of guests who only ate nasi lemak throughout the three days I was at the resort. It has  nothing to do with Bukit Merah Laketown Resort, and is not a post from the hotel. To view the rates or promotion of the resort, please visit >>> http://www.bukitmerahresort.com.my/