Tiger's Memorial Garden

We needed a way to honor the most awesome cat in the world - Tiger.

After putting our heads together, we decided to plant a bird garden in the back yard, close to where he really enjoyed hanging out and watching the birds.

We've slowly been working on adding elements to his garden.

The first thing we did was make a memorial stone for him.  I had some concrete in the house for making stepping stones from when the kids were little.  (Yes, I do have entirely too much junk in the house.)  I made the stone in a disposable pie pan.

We decided that this garden would go in a corner of the yard that's close to the Elm tree.  The grass kind of curves around the tree, and it seems like a natural place for a garden.  We already have a bird house back there, so that was our starting place.

We then planted a couple of bushes - one holly bush, and one rhododendron.  Both bushes are evergreens.  The holly bush will bring in a lot of birds, and he enjoyed hanging out under the rhododendrons close to the house.

The Rhody is finally looking good.  It had a hard time adapting to the new habitat, and spent a lot of time "weeping".  The ends of the branches are no longer weeping to the ground.  Hopefully, this means it's taken root!

I'm a fan of Hostas.  They are big and leafy, and they are perennials.  I picked up three of the biggest Hostas I could find at the farm stand, and then added in some big bold New Guinea Impatiens in front. Hey, I even did something I haven't done in this house in the 10 years we've been here.  I put down landscape cloth and mulch.  Whoa - this space is looking really nice!

Daughter works at a major big box retailer.  Over the past few weeks, she's been picking up solar garden elements to put in that corner.  We have an LED tree, and LED bird, and an LED color changing ball. 

It's hard to see the twig tree in this picture, it blends in so well.

For now, it's finished.  I have plans to add a bird bath and possibly a place for butterflies to puddle.
It's become a nice, reflective place.  We have plans to add a couple more things back there, but we won't add any more plants until the fall when the weather gets cooler and wetter.

Wow, you can really tell where the landscape cloth went down!  I really need to put more down.

Busy Morning

Years ago, I wrote this piece from the point of view of Tiger. Enjoy!

2002-2017


This has been a particularly busy day for me today.  The morning began when I gently sat upon the chest of my human.  When she refused to open her eyes, I gently batted her face with my paws.  She rolled over and knocked me to the floor.  Silly human!  As if throwing me to the floor could prevent me from stalking her! 
Since patting her on the face didn't seem to work out so well, I had to resort to other, less civilized (but much more effective) means of waking her up.  I bit her toes.

Once she was out of bed, I moved on to the next of my victims.  Humans number two and three were still snoozing gently in their beds.  I love these two boy humans.  They feed me, they scratch me, and every once in a while, they will get me my favorite treats.  I was so excited at the prospect of them playing with me before they caught the ride in the large yellow limousine at the corner, I jumped on top of each one of them until they began moving. 

After I woke everyone in the house up, I insisted that they let me outside.  I stood by the kitchen door, scratching and meowing until they opened the door.  Once the door was open, I stood and sniffed the breeze.  Since it was rather chilly out this morning, I quickly turned around and went back inside.  My young girl human had just moved out of her bed, so I quickly slid into the warm place under the covers that she had left just for me.  Ahhh... it was so nice and warm, I quickly fell back asleep.

When the two boys left for the big yellow limousine, I followed after them.  I went outside and walked with them just to the edge of the driveway.  They went to the left to walk to the corner of the street.  I turned to the right and quickly darted into the special slot in the street made just for us cats.  You know, there are several of them along the sidewalks.  They are about 3 feet wide, and several inches high.  There is a big slab of white rock over the top with a hole like a circle in the top, covered with another brown circle.

I stood on the ledge just inside of the fort and waited until the yellow limousine safely picked up my boys, and then I proceeded furthur underground into the maze that is the fort. 

My girl goes to the right at the end of the driveway to catch her yellow limousine.  You see, I go through the maze and wait for her near her waiting place.  While she is standing and waiting with her friends, I reach out with my lightning fast paw and grab shoelaces.  My goal for the morning is to untie all of the laces without being seen before the yellow thing comes.  It was a good morning for me.  I untied all 10 pairs of laces without being detected!  Boo-Yah!

The Fuzz Factor

I originally wrote this piece from Tiger's viewpoint after a memorable morning.  I was attempting to get the kids out of the house and off to school when this happened.  Even though it's been close to ten years since this happened, I can still remember the mouse scurrying along the kitchen baseboard, and Tiger watching us with great disappointment.  And I can still see Oldest Son sitting on the floor, having a very serious discussion with the cat about people food.   He never did teach us to hunt! 

I had a great day in the yard this morning. 

I love fall.  You see, the small grey mice are scurrying around, looking for new, warmer places to spend the winter.  I just love playing with the mice.  This morning, I had one for breakfast.  Mmmm....yummy mice.

I was out early this morning.  For some reason, my humans let me out early today.  After I had my breakfast, it hit me that my humans did not know how to hunt.

The oldest boy human should be able to hunt for himself now, and yet he spends his time looking for prey in the noisy white box in the kitchen.  What kind of parents are those two grown humans anyway?  They should be teaching their young humans to forage for themselves!!

Anyway, since I was up and about early this morning, I decided it was time to boy human #1 to hunt.  I thought I would do it just like my mother did for me.  I would cripple the mouse, and then bring it to him so that he could kill it off.  Fortunately, the mice are frantically scurrying around now, looking for food, so it was easy to find another mouse to offer to the oldest boy human.

I knew my humans were up, I could see them stalking the giant white box for food.  I caught my mouse and brought it over to the door.  Keeping the mouse safely tucked into my mouth, I began scratching at the kitchen door to be let in. 

Perfect!  Boy #1 opened the door for me!  I bounded in and dropped the mouse at his feet.

Ungrateful humans!  The mother jumped onto the kitchen chair.  Boy #2 began laughing so hard tears were coming out of his eyes.  Boy #1 looked like he didn't know what to do.  He picked up my mouse by the tail and tossed it back outside!  That was a great breakfast!  Freshly caught mouse, and he just tossed it aside like a used catnip mouse.  I scolded him with my whiskers back, and he sat down with me and tried to explain something about "mouse is not people food." 

I switched my tail at him and went back outside.  Fortunately, I was able to find my mouse quickly, and I sat down to enjoy my second breakfast.

How can I be expected to teach my humans how to hunt if they don't take me seriously?

Luna

Since Tiger's passing, Luna has been very sad and quiet.  She has been hanging out in all of Tiger's favorite hidey-holes.  She's not been as talkative as usual. She's been disappearing for long periods of time, and when I find her, she's in one of Tiger's favorite quiet spots.  Because of this, we decided to take her to the vet.  We wanted to make certain that she is healthy, and find out what we can do to help make her adjustment to a life without Tiger a little bit easier.

Our amazing vet spent a half an hour with Luna, talking with her, cooing at her, giving her some awesome scritches and asking us questions.  Once Luna gets through her kitty mourning, she will be fine.  We don't know how long her mourning will last, but we need to keep her as happy and content as possible.  And we need to keep her challenged.

Our vet then shared with us information about Enrichment toys for cats.  These aren't the same as chew toys for dogs - or even catnip toys (of which she has many).  No, these are food puzzles.  It seems that cats in the wild only catch 15% of the food that they hunt.  Thus, they are able to keep themselves slim and trim.  In our house, the cats only have to walk over to the food dish and eat their fill.  It's seemed to be a good method, but Luna needs more stimulation right now, and she needs to lose a few of those little pounds that she has recently gained.

And so, we've spent the past couple of days making food puzzles for her.  Right now, she has an open egg carton filled with food.  She has to put her paw into the egg holes and get her food out.  We have each little cup filled a little over halfway with food.  She puts one paw down in the lid of the egg carton to hold everything still while she fishes for her food. 

We've been working on making the next one right now.  We've taken a small water bottle and cut a couple of holes in the sides.  The idea is that we'll put her food in the (empty) water bottle and leave it in the spot where the egg carton is now.  She'll have to bat it around in order to get the food out.  Our goal is to eventually have enough different kinds of enrichment feeders that we'll be able to put a new one out every day for two weeks without repeating anything.

If you'd like to find out more, you can follow this link that our vet gave us:
http://foodpuzzlesforcats.com/

Tiger

Sweet little kitty with the heart of a warrior.

 

Tiger passed away last week at the grand age of 15.

He followed my daughter down to the bus stop when she was in Kindergarten.  He was trying to catch the straps on her back pack.  He watched her climb onto the bus, and then he followed me home.  I opened the door, and he darted inside and climbed into the dryer, on top of the nice warm laundry, and refused to move out.

We posted signs all over the neighborhood, but nobody ever claimed him.  He stayed in our house and became a part of our family.  For 15 years, he's been there with us, a part of our family, always in the middle of everything.  He allowed the kids to dress him in doll clothes and push him around in the stroller.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I miss this little guy.  He's been with me through so much - a mainstay when my Dad passed, and the furry little pillow who would get up when I had trouble sleeping and insert his purring little self up under my hand.  He always knew when I had a bad day, and he would just sit with me, purring and licking my hands and face until I felt better.

I am really going to miss that little kitty.



Old Posts about Tiger

A Word From the Cat
August 19, 2011
November 3, 2011
July 5, 2013
July 25, 2013
September 28, 2013
January 15, 2013
January 28, 2014



Taking the Cats to the Vet

From the Cats
July 20, 2012