Product reviews

Christmas came early for Dirk: Gus & Bella’s Santa Paws box

* Originally written by me for katzenworld.co.uk

Regular readers of our Katzenworld blog will know about Gus & Bella’s Boxes, but for those who haven’t heard of them yet let me tell you a little bit about them.

Gus & Bella’s gift boxes contain gifts for cats and people, so they are perfect for cat owners! They contain a mix of toys, food and treats for your cat and trendy gifts for yourself. You can subscribe to get a box every month or choose to buy a single box, ideal as a gift. This year’s Christmas box makes an ideal gift for any cat owner, whether they have a kitten or adult cat. And rest assured if you have a fussy cat or if your cat has any food intolerances: these are catered for as well!

Dirk and I received our very own Christmas box, the Santa Paws box. I don’t know who was more excited about it!

Obviously, unpacking it together is part of the fun. If you order the box for yourself then you’ll see on the website what is inside so it’s less of a surprise. I had no idea though, so it was very much like the anticipation of unwrapping a Christmas present.

Dirk could hardly wait. In fact, he decided to get inside the box first at the opportunity he got to check out his gifts.

So let’s check out the cat presents first. The box contains a lot of food and treats. Now that makes Dirk a very happy boy!

However, the first thing he went for was, of course, a catnip toy. He loves both catnip toys in this box and we had a great time playing with the teaser wand together (although Dirk would not have minded having the toy all to himself…)

As for my presents, well, Dirk was not overly impressed (can’t eat them, no catnip, he’s not allowed to play with them) but I am very happy with them indeed. I’ll be spreading some Christmas cheer and helping to keep others safe with the Christmas cats face mask! I also absolutely love the felt Christmas bauble. No problem if Dirk tries to knock this one from the Christmas tree and it looks so cute! I’ll need to get more, even if just for the lower branches of the tree 😉

Last, but not least if you ask Dirk, the box itself is a gift for the cat as well – even if he does not quite fit inside….

The Santa Paws box is available for pre-order here and ships 8 December

Product reviews, Toys

Dirk’s unusual game with Peek-a-Bird

* Originally written by me for katzenworld.co.uk

We all know that cats don’t always do what we want or expect them to do. For me, that’s part of what I like about them: they are not as docile or obedient as some other pets. They very much have a mind of their own and can be very particular about things.

Dirk is – frankly – pretty docile but even he doesn’t always do what I want him to do or play with a toy quite the way it was intended… PetSafe’s Peek-a-Bird is one such example.

The Peek-a-Bird has openings on either side and when switched on a feather appears randomly from either side so your cat can chase it. Sometimes it appears on the same side twice in a row so it is not possible for your cat to predict on which side the feather will appear next. The feather moves around for a bit before retreating to entice your cat to hunt for it.

A play session lasts for 10 minutes after which the toy switches off automatically. You can also activate and ‘all day’ mode. The toy then switches on for 10 minutes at a time every two hours. Even better: it also switches on when the sensor picks up movement from your cat. Basically, your cat will have a toy that switches on whenever they want to play! I absolutely love that idea.

As I said, though, Dirk had other ideas of how to play with the toy!

When switched on, Dirk keeps watching it and also tries to bite the feather, but he does not chase the feather much. However, as soon as the bird switches off he wants to play with the bird itself. He does sometimes try and get the feather out of the toy when it’s switched off, but his main focus is giving the bird a good kicking.

He’ll kick it around the floor or the rug and also seems to like kicking it back and forth with me. Should perhaps not have been too much of a surprise as he is named after a football player 😉

But in any case, that is not what I expected him to do at all. When the Peek-a-Bird is on the floor somewhere he’ll walk over to it when he wants to play with me and starts pushing or kicking it towards me.

Peek-a-Bird also comes with a spare feather in case the first one becomes too damaged to play with. Knowing most cats are mad about feathers (Dirk is too with some of his other toys) it’s good that PetSafe included a spare one. However, it would be even better if they start selling extra spare feathers as I can imagine some cats will quickly go through both.

My guess is that cats will either love Peek-a-Bird or ignore it and whether or not your cat will like it may be difficult to predict. I’d recommend it to owners of kittens or cats that enjoy hide-and-seek style games.

Product reviews

Dirk’s very first Water Fountain

Many cats prefer drinking running water over drinking still water. They drink from the tap or the shower basin or splash water from their bowl before drinking it. There are several theories about the reasons behind this. In all likelihood this behaviour is largely instinctual: in the wild, cats drink moving water as this is less likely to make them sick. Cats also have an excellent sense of hearing so it is easy for them to hear and locate the sound of running water from farther away.

Some cats happily drink from their bowls, but others insist on getting into the shower after you’ve finished or will not rest until you turn on the tap to let the water run… For those tap water loving cats, a water fountain may well be the perfect solution. Drinkwell’s big dog water fountain is also excellent for multi-cat households or for those cats that like to play with their water or tip over their bowl: they won’t manage to do so with this fountain!

Dirk has never had a water fountain, but as you’ll see he proves even an older cat can learn new tricks 😉

As you can see, Dirk quite enjoyed playing with this fountain, something he didn’t do with his water bowl. I initially left his bowl next to the fountain just in case it took Dirk a while to start drinking from it. He only drank from the bowl once after I put the fountain down so even though he hasn’t previously had a fountain he clearly prefers it over the still water. He mostly prefers to drink from the top, right where the water comes out but drinks from the bowl section of the fountain as well. I imagine cats that love tap water will drink more from the free flowing stream (and not just play with it as Dirk does!).

This particular Drinkwell fountain is plastic and is of course free of BPA. The is filtered and the constant water circulation in the bowl helps prevent bacteria growth. The water stream entices cats to drink more and thus helps prevent urinary and kidney diseases in cats. It does make some noise, but this did not deter Dirk and I didn’t find it annoying at all.

Product reviews

Keeping an eye on Dirk with the Ezviz C1C camera

I’m sure most cat owners wonder what their cats get up to when they are home alone. I certainly do! Sometimes I find evidence he’s been playing as there are toys all over the room, other days I find no evidence of any activity whatsoever, apart from eating 😉

For everyone who is tempted to get a camera to keep an eye on their cats, I can recommend the Ezviz C1C camera. I tested version with the 1080 pixel camera (they also have version with a 720 pixel camera) which gives you a 130 degree view and super sharp images!

I won’t get into too much technical detail, you can find those here. Instead, let me tell you about my experience with the camera and why I think it could be useful – as well as fun – for cat owners. And for UK stockists please click here

Set up of the camera and the app is really very easy and after that you can place the camera wherever you want. It has a long cable and also comes with a magnetic mounting kit, which make it easy to fix to a wall, bookcase, cupboard or the ceiling. Once you’ve done that, the fun can begin!

Being a novice with this type of cameras, I was really amazed by how sharp the video is and how much of the room you can see. In fact, I cropped some of the images for privacy reason 😉
The app is very user friendly and I found it very intuitive to use.

What is this thing??

With this camera you can also talk to your cat. This is more fun for us than for the cat I image… The first few times I did this Dirk was intrigued and went over to check out the camera. However, after a few times he only moved his head or ignored it altogether. So it’s a fun feature, but after testing it a few times I no longer really use it. This feature is more useful if you’d use the camera to talk to people as it is a two-way feature.

For me, I found it fun to use this camera and that is a good enough reason in itself! If you want to know how your cat is doing while you’re at work you open the app to look at the live feed. If he’s not active at the moment, but has been active while you weren’t looking then you can have a look at the video clips that have been saved. And the camera automatically goes to infrared night vision when there’s little light. Even in night vision mode the images are very sharp.

If you want to save video data you either need a micro SD card or you can sign up to use the Ezviz cloud.

However, this camera can also be genuinely useful. I am a cat behaviourist and I could imagine using this camera in a few situations.

For example, if your cat is no longer using its litter tray (and the vet cannot find a medical reason for this!) then you can set up the camera to monitor how the cat is behaving new their litter tray and how it is behaving prior to peeing or pooping somewhere else.

If your cat has separation anxiety, you can see how long this actually lasts. It’s horrible for us to leave the home while hearing the cat howl. You might feel guilty and worry the cat is feeling anxious all day. However, the camera might show you that the cat settles down again after a few minutes.

It can also be useful if you have more than one cat and there are some problems between them. We don’t know what happens when they are away and the cats might behave differently when we are home. At some point growing up, we had two cats named Boris and Binky. Boris was the dominant one and would chase Binky away or pick a fight. However, one night we discovered that at night Binky was actually the one in charge. This just goes to show that if your cats don’t get along it’s not always easy to see which one is being dominant and which one is the ‘victim’. If you monitor them with a camera while you are away you get a much clearer picture – no pun intended – of which cats shows what behaviour and how they interact when home alone.

Some cats live near a ‘neighbourhood bully’. If you have a camera you can keep an eye on cats visiting your garden or. If your cat has outdoor access as well you can keep an eye on their interactions with other cats. If you want to, you can activate a motion detection alarm which will tell you if someone is moving in the garden. I can imagine that the two-way audio feature could come in handy here: if you notice another cat is about to attack your cat then a sudden sound might startle it enough to run away. However, cats have territorial disputes, this is part of their behaviour. If you don’t want your cat to roam around the neighbourhood or other cats to visit your garden then install a fencing system (such as the ones from ProtectaPet).

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Those are just a few examples of cases is which having a camera may be useful. Let’s be honest, for the most part it is fun. We all love seeing pictures or videos of our pets when we are away, we wonder what they get up to and most of us really miss them when we’re not home. I loved watching Dirk have his crazy 5 minutes on camera. For the most part though, it just confirmed that Dirk is basically asleep between 9am and 4 pm 😉

Cat fun, Product reviews, Toys

Dirk and the new 4Cats Cuddly Cushion

* Originally written by me for katzenworld.co.uk

Dirk couldn’t be happier because 4Cats has a new Cuddle Cushion!

You may have read the review about Dirk’s first cuddle cushion: he went absolutely mad. He loves this new one at least as much as the previous version, perhaps even more.

So what’s new about this Cuddle Cushion? 4Cats uses a different fabric for the new cushions. The fabric is soft but also a bit of texture to it. The previous one was soft and smooth and Dirk mainly cuddled with that cushion. With the new one he still cuddles a lot – he loves rubbing his face in it. He now also quite likes kicking this toy which he didn’t really do with the previous one. Rather than animal print these new cushions come in 4 different colours.

Those are the details, but I know you want to see Dirk in action 😉

Did I tell you he goes mad for it?
Part of it is undoubtedly the catnip effect as 4Cats use catnip of excellent quality. He rolls around with all through the living room and kicks it a lot.
Don’t try and take this cushion away from him – he’ll hold on to it with all his might! Use other toys to play tug-of-war 😉

Rolling and kicking are just two of Dirk’s favourite things to do with the cushion. The others are rubbing and licking/biting it. I have to admit he does this a lot. I think it looks super cute. It also makes this toy a bit different from other toys as Dirk doesn’t usually cuddle with his toys. The 4Cats Cuddle Cushions are an exception.
Even though these Cuddle Cushions are quite small cats of all ages will probably like them. Initially I thought it would be best for kittens, but I’ve since given several of my cat sitting clients’ cats a Cuddle Cushion and it triggers similar cuddle&rubbing behaviour in those other cats too. Fun to watch and I’m absolutely certain it will make your cat feel happy too 🙂

Get your 4Cats Cuddle Cushion in the Katzenworld shop.