catification of Beechwood continues

The main ingredient has arrived - a cat!

We collected Mallory, a brown Burmese kitten, from Adelaide last week and she is proving to be an immaculately-mannered little darling. She's a stomach-on-legs at this tender age of 11 weeks, eating prodigiously without the competition of 4 brothers, using the litter tray, playing fiercely and sleeping just as intensely.

The cat gym was a doddle - ignoring the dinky ladder and straight to the top by the end of day 3:

 

tentative day 2

top of the tower day 3

 

triumphant day 8

 

 

Meanwhile, builders Geoff and Nathan were hard at work creating the outdoor cat enclosure. Plans were fluid, plenty of room for their input, which we welcomed - it's now more of a cat Taj Mahal than we envisaged and it's great!

 

They hauled old planks encrusted with ants and huntsman spiders out of the timber shed and converted them into a stunningly funky mismatched wall of palings which Alison ensures me is "right on trend" , in our case a matter of using what is already on the property. There look to be enough cat walks around the top and steps up to them, makes you want to be a cat and try it out yourself.

 

 

funky wall with cat steps
there will a fernery here when we get some decent soil

 

cat cathedral?

ferns waiting for their new home



crayfish at last

January yielded only one crayfish in David's pots so this month he and Rory have been diving off the back of Rory's boat using a hooka.

With some success:



 

Then today there was one in the craypot - so perhaps his luck has changed.