Rowan @ the Hotel

Hiding toys under the bed

And hiding some toys behind the couch

Taking a break on the couch

Re-hydrating at the bar

Seeing the ocean out the window and the big waves made me nervous so I got as high as I could

Relaxing in the bed

Kitty roadtrip

I am in California right now visiting family for the holidays. I brought baby Bengal down to my grandma and she seems to be settling in nicely. In addition to the kitten I brought my 2 cats and 2 dogs in the car with me. The drive totaled roughly 9 hours and surprisingly everyone did well. I let them roam free in the car because 9 hours is just too long to be trapped in a carrier. The dogs and my adult female cat (Nori) have traveled to California with me before, but this was new for baby Bengal and Rowan. Rowan did very well though, because he is used to traveling in the car on his harness hanging his head out the window. This time he was frustrated that I wouldn't roll the window down for him, but quickly calmed down. Baby Bengal was very stressed for the first hour, but she chilled out with Rowan eventually. If he got up she got up, if he was sleeping, she was curled up into him. I'm glad he kept her relaxed. He did an excessive amount of grooming on her, probably because he could sense she was stressed and wanted to make her feel calm. In the end the two of them spent the majority of the time snuggling in one of the open carriers.

Rowan and Nori haven't been on good terms with each other. Her panties have been in a bunch since watching the baby bengal, but after checking into the hotel and delivering the baby to her new home I was surprised to find Rowan and Norio playing like old pals again. Both seem to be having fun exploring the hotel room and zipping around chasing each other over and under the furniture. It is nice seeing them like that again. I was feeling guilty about taking baby Bengal from Rowan since he was so fond of her and I wasn't sure if he would understand or be depressed, but he seems ok. At home if he couldn't find her around the house he would call for her. I am glad he isn't doing that. This hotel is dog friendly but not kitty friendly so him doing loud Bengal calls would not be good.

New cat tower

Yesterday we got a new cat tower. The other tower was amazing but Rowan literally out grew it. His rear end actually tore the fabric in one place when he tried laying in it and the fabric couldn't stretch any further! The cats really liked the other one because it was 7ft tall, had hiding holes, plenty of scratch-able places, and these cool basket like seats that hung off three different tiers and the cats would lounge in them for hours all tightly cuddled up. The old one I got for a reasonable price online, but I was feeling impulsive so I found one at PetCo that was decently priced and big enough to hold Rowan. It is about a foot shorter than the other, but definitely more sturdy. No fancy lounging baskets, but it will hold Rowan for a long time to come, and at the rate he's been growing, that is important!


I attempted to take some cute pictures of him playing on it tonight with baby Bengal, but instead I got this....honestly I have no words for this, but I'm sort of nervous!

Today I tried to bring out the wild in my cats

So I had the crazy idea of trying to bring out the wild instincts of Rowan tonight. My thought was to introduce a new exciting activity for him to keep him happy. When he is bored, he usually causes trouble...3 of my electrical cords had to pay the price of his bordem when he chewed through them. I purchased ten 13cent fishy's from PetSmart and put them in a shallow amount of water, then I let the cats have at it. Initially they seemed shocked and intrigued by their movement and watched them swim for over an hour. To spice things up a bit I dipped one of Rowan's paws into the water to show him that it was ok, then he got enough courage to do it on his own.

He never actually caught or even came close to touching a fish, so we look one out of the water for him and he liked that. He ate the fish right away quickly followed by another. Thankfully he didn't make them suffer. In the end it wasn't as big of a success as I thought it would be....but I do think they enjoyed it :)

Quick run down of Bengal Cats (from what I know)

For those who don't know, a Bengal is a hybrid type of cat that is created by breeding an Asian leopard cat with a domestic cat. When I first heard about the breed, I assumed leopard meant beautiful and huge wild cat. However the Asian leopard is more like a small Bob Cat or Lynx. Most Bengals now are very far down the line from the wild cat so they are very domesticated and suitable as loving pets. They are generally much larger than domestic cats. Rowan is 8 months old and over 11 pounds, he will likely grow until he is 14months old. They are normally very people/family oriented, smart, comical, and food oriented. Rowan is an inside/outside cat and is also trained to walk on a leash. He is more like a puppy trapped in a cats body. Without the right outlets Bengals can be rather destructive, they need to have things available to them to exercise mind and body. Even with mountains of cat toys and 2 huge cat towers, Rowan still gets himself into trouble. He has chewed through 3 electrical cords and even chewed up the ends of our plastic blinds. Also, Rowan is loud! He has many types of meows, growls, and bark type sounds that he uses in specific situations, but he doesn't incessantly use his voice nor does he use his sounds in the middle of the night (thankfully). Bengals have specific markings on their bodies that are standard to the breed, such as spotted stomachs, black paw pads, spotted or marbled fur, black tipped tails, and pink noses. They do have other color variations besides the brown spotted bengal (silver, snow, mink, pure black leopard spotted).

Everything in the house is a toy....including the Christmas tree!

I knew when we got the Christmas tree that Rowan would assume we got him the greatest present ever, but I did not think he would be this crazy about it. As soon as it was carried inside Rowan was intrigued. He instantly poked his head out from inside his cat tower examining from a distance what all the commotion was about. After he realized it was a tree his eyes got wide with excitement. He took up shop right underneath the tree. We let him explore it for a while hoping he would lose interest, but that didn't happen. He tried to lay in the bottom row of branches, but he must have forgotten that he weighs over 11 pounds and the branches couldn't hold his weight and he fell to the ground (not to mention our beautiful noble fur now had plenty of gaps and holes, I suppose we should've spent so much time searching for the most perfect looking tree). After he put his finishing touches on the bottom branches, we shoo-ed him out so we could decorate. Obviously I should have known ornaments also double as hockey pucks, because as soon as we put them up, he took them down! You would think that shattering a glass ornament would detour him, but no, that was just as exciting. I had to chase him away from the shards of glass before he hurt himself. We then made sure all the remaining ornaments were secured tightly as possible. The next day we bought several boxes of flavored candy canes to hang on the tree. Honestly we didn't think they would be interesting enough for him to even notice, but I've been wrong before. He loved the candy canes more than the ornaments! Knocking them off the tree was a piece of cake for him, plus they come in shiny crinkley plastic wrapping that comes un-done as they break into pieces when they fall to the floor (and crinkley things are like crack to cats). He loved pawing them across the living room and underneath the tree skirt and then fetching them back out again. I will admit that seeing him carry whole candy canes across the house was pretty cute, so it was difficult to be mad at him for killing all the candy canes on the bottom half of the tree. Now that they are all gone, he seems content on just destroying the tree skirt. I'm not sure what is so threatening about a brown Walmart tree skirt, but he seriously hates it. Every day we fix the skirt and make it pretty under the tree and every day he runs and slides into it. He plays so hard in it that he un-does the velcro and it all ends up in a ball in the middle of the living room. Yesterday I even caught him beating up the tree skirt by bear hugging it and using his back legs to kick the crap out of it! But kicking the tree skirts butt apparently isn't enough, he has it out for the whole tree. I am certain that is we hadn't intervened, the entire tree would have come crashing down. He ran and dove into the tree in what seemed to be an attempt to climb to the very top, but the makers of our tree stand apparently did not test the stands ability to hold a tree up in a Bengal owners house and it started to tip with the added weight to one side if the tree. Thank goodness we were able to stabilize things before that catastrophe occurred.

Next years plans include:
No candy canes
Plastic bulbs
No tree skirt
Wall anchoring kit from home depot!