ATTENTION MOGGYBLOG READERS!
Be sure to enter the SIMON'S CAT BOOK CONTEST! I have five copies of the book to give away. Follow the link for all the details.

I may have spoken too soon when I said the Tabasco sauce didn't work. Jetta hasn't touched the duct tape since the initial noshing took place. Mind you, it may have been the Tabasco sauce that discouraged her, or it may have been the cayenne pepper that I sprinkled on it afterwards. Jetta crept up to the tape after I finishing sprinkling some cayenne on it, took an unhappy sniff and gave me such as "WTF?" look. At any rate, there has been no further noshing on the tape, so I may have succeeded.

Oy. It seems that Jetta is impervious to Tabasco sauce. Either that, or the stuff loses its punch after it dries out. I found the duct tape munched on this morning.

Many years back, Diva had such serious skin allergies that she was literally scratching bloody holes in herself. The vet recommended Bitter Apple as a way to discourage her from biting at herself because of the taste it leaves. I guess I'll have to track down some Bitter Apple and give that a try.

Be sure to enter the SIMON'S CAT BOOK CONTEST! Follow the link for all the details.

The SIMON'S CAT BOOK CONTEST is off to a nice start. Don't forget to enter! Follow the link for all the details.

Jetta is a darling, but strange little girl. Her continued obsession with gnawing on any kind of plasticized tape (like duct tape or packing tape) has nearly caused me to break my neck. I have a place where I have to run an extension cord across a narrow path and unless I keep it securely taped to the carpet with duct tape, I trip over it.

It was too delicious for Jetta to resist and she chewed the tape to pieces. After nearly going on my face yet again, I pulled out the duct tape and restuck the cord to the floor. I was trying to think of some way to discourage her from eating the tape. Then the Evil Thought struck. I have doused the tape with Tabasco sauce. If that doesn't keep her fangs off it, nothing will.

Though with my luck, I'll have the one mutant cat in all Moggydom that likes Tabasco sauce. We shall see.

If you aren't already a fan of Simon Tofield's brilliant animations of SIMON'S CAT, you're missing a treat. You should immediately visit the official SIMON'S CAT page and watch the videos: http://www.simonscat.com/films.html

Now SIMON'S CAT has his own book and five lucky readers of the Moggyblog can qualify to win a free copy!

Thanks to the generosity of the publisher, Hachette Book Group USA, I can give away five copies of SIMON'S CAT. Below you'll see the front and back covers, and a couple of pages from the book. It's completely delightful.

The one restriction placed on the contest is that they will only mail copies of the book to addresses within the United States and Canada.

I debated the best way to pick the winners. It didn't seem fair to award the first five people to write to me because I'm sure people don't check in on a daily basis. Some people might only check in on the Moggyblog once a week or even less.

With that in mind, I'm going to let the contest run for three weeks: from 20 Nov. to 20 Dec. 2009. If you want to enter to win a book, send me an email requesting to be entered into the contest. At the end of the three weeks, I'll toss the names into a hat and draw five at random. Or maybe I'll let one of my cats make the selection. However I do it, it will be a random drawing.

There's a permanent page with this info: SIMON'S CAT CONTEST PAGE

Write to me at:

Pippin had a visit to the vet yesterday. For weeks, he's had goopy eyes on and off. I had a hunch about what might be causing it, but wanted a professional evaluation. The verdict was "allergic conjunctivitis". Which could mean a number of things, but my hunch is that he's having a bad reaction to getting dust in his eyes from the cat box. Often when he uses the cat box, he comes out with dust all over his head (or tail, etc.). I continue to think that chicken feed is a fantastic solution to cat litter, but the particular chicken feed I have to buy now is horribly dusty. It's worse than other brands I've bought in the past. He's getting eye drops for a week and I'm going to use saline eye drops (like Artificial Tears) when I see too much dust on his face. Hopefully, that will clear it up.

The vet also thinks we need to slowly wean him down from one cup a day of the diet cat food to only half a cup a day. By slowly, she means over the course of four months. Poor boy. I don't think he's going to be happy about this.

I was in the dining room when I heard a loud clatter-bash sound from the kitchen. I raced into the kitchen, wondering what on earth could have made that sound. There are long, slatted, vertical blinds over the sliding glass kitchen doors to the back yard and Pippin was amidst the blinds, which were in disarray. Then I looked at the screen door on the other side of the glass and there, at my eye level, about five feet up from the outside steps, I saw a young squirrel spread-eagled and upside down on the screen. All his claws were hooked into the screen, his tail was as straight as a bottle-brush and he was frozen in place. It was easy to guess that the sound I heard was from Pippin making a mad leap against the glass trying to get the squirrel.

The squirrel and I were only inches away, separated by the glass, and I got a long look at him. Yes, I can definitely confirm it was a him. Finally, I took pity on the poor little guy and moved away, letting the blinds fall back into place. He instantly scurried down to the ground, but didn't run off. He investigated the garden hose and bounced around a bit before taking to the trees. Pippin was quiet the rest of the time. He didn't meow or chatter. He knows that the squirrels are normally beyond reach, but seeing one so close was obviously more temptation than he could resist.

The job search continues. Zoe continues to occupy my lap with great contentment when I'm at the computer, which is for hours a day. Pippin, Saffy and Opal will often let us sleep in as late as 8:30! They're keeping us on an honest schedule. But they're ever so gentle in how they wake us up. It usually consists of subtle techniques such as staring intently at the sleeper's face until the sleeper feel the laser-beams of cat eyeballs. Or pawing at the covers to get underneath them. Or making soft little meeps or chirps. I could think of worse ways to be woken up.

Opal does have one other technique I could do without -- crawling way under the bed and throwing up. Because all I can think about after that is that I have to crawl under the bed and clean it up.

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