12-26-16 Happy Boxing Day!

Posted on by Robyn

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Happy Boxing Day!

Today is Boxing Day – according to Wikipedia:

Boxing Day is a holiday traditionally celebrated the day following Christmas Day, when servants and tradespeople would receive gifts, known as a “Christmas box”, from their bosses or employers, in the United Kingdom, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, South Africa, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and other Commonwealth nations. Today, Boxing Day is the bank holiday that generally takes place on 26 December.

That’s all well and good, but we prefer to celebrate Boxing Day in a more interesting way.


Ya finds yerself a box, and in you go. If you (mostly) fits, then you sits. Boxing Day is Newt’s favorite day of the year.


“Am I doing it right?” You’re doing it PERFECTLY, Archie.


“I find it less than relaxing with Jake sniffing around.”


It looks like Jake spends a lot of time sniffing around waiting for a turn in the box!


Who says you have to be IN the box? On top of the box is a perfectly valid way to spend Boxing Day, in case you were wondering.


What? You think only the cats get to celebrate this special day?

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Previously
2015: No entry.
2014: Boxing Day!
2013: “Little kitten, whose name I do not remember, watch carefully. This is my kitten slappin’ paw, and it’s meant for YOU, so I’m cleaning it up.”
2012: She’s one clean little monkey.
2011: Outtakes from the Christmas Day picture shoot.
2010: No entry.
2009: I know the Wonka girls had to be sound asleep when that Cookie crawled into the bed, because I’m fairly certain there’s no way they would have put up with THAT if they were awake.
2008: No entry.
2007: Sleeping Punki Pie.
2006: No entry.
2005: Mister Boogers likes to live dangerously.

Comments

32 thoughts on “12-26-16 Happy Boxing Day!”

  5. Absolutely inspired. Many thanks for my first true smile since news of George Michael hit. Please add to favorite posts!

  8. ROFL on the last picture! Happy Boxing Day to one and all. Now, about those after-Christmas sales….

  10. Don’t forget to let us know when the 2016 cards are put on Flickr!
    Have a great boxing day.

  13. Hi!

    I need some advice from experienced cat people.

    My mom has three cats. Recently they (don’t know exactly which of the cats) have started to pee/spray in the house. On plastic bags, plastic bowls, kitchen towels, bath towels, you name it.
    All the cats are female and are spayed. Two of the cats are from the same litter and have always gotten along. The third one was adopted from a local animal shelter. She is attacked by one of the sibling cats. This has always been like this – they have never gotten along.
    They have lived together for 4-5 years. Marking/spraying started recently, since my mom is away from home a lot (my brother still lives here and grandma comes hangs out with the cats).
    My mom is sick of the smell of cat urine everywhere and one evening she told me she will either give all of them away or put them down. This cannot be the solution. I won’t accept it. What should I do? What can I do? Any advice? 🙁
    I read about this Feliway diffuser, has anyone tried it?

    1. First — determine which cat is responsible and take them to the vet to eliminate a medical issue as the source of inappropriate urination. Second — litterboxes. Are they clean, out of high traffic areas, appropriate litter, big enough? Are there enough of them? Is someone being stalked in the litterbox? If this is the case, try placing a litterbox well away from where the other two usually hang out.

      Is the third one fixed? If not, get them fixed.

      I’m sure others here have ideas to try.

    2. I’ve tried the Feliway stuff and don’t think it makes a huge difference, but hope springs eternal. If it’s a recent development, definitely get to the vet – a urinary tract infection is easy to fix with a week of antibiotics. If medical causes are ruled out, consider what else has changed recently and how that can be remedied. Because the two cats have never really gotten along and the peeing is a recent development, it’s probably not because of the other cat. But it could be something like having changed the location of the litterbox, and now the new location makes it easier for the more dominant cat to target the meeker cat. Does the meeker cat have a space to get away from the dominant cat? If not, maybe adding some shelves or a cat tree can help.

      1. The litter box and food bowls are at the same places as always. There are two ways there in this house, so none of the cats gets cornered.
        The only thing is that my mom is away from home a lot and that’s a recent thing. She’s starting to think about the cats as a “problem” and not “pets” and this makes me very angry. I never thought my 46 year old mother can be so stupid.
        I’ll try to arrange the vet thing, but I have a feeling that peeing everywhere is the cats revenge to my mom being away from home. I lived with two of the cats for 6 years and even when one of them had a urinary tract infection, she still used her litterbox. She just did it very frequently and that caught my attention.

      2. Feliway works if that was the issue to begin with. it is a mimic of the welcoming pheromone that they rub on things with their cheeks, so it makes the environment more welcoming. If they are not stressed and not feeling unwelcome there is no point in using it.. Kinda like using hand cream when your hands aren’t dry.

        Personally, I would get all of the cats into the vet for a check up, doing full blood panels and urinalysis on all of them. I’m guessing they haven’t gone for a while, simply because most cat households generally don’t go to the vet as frequently as recommended, and making sure they are all in good health is vital. There are a lot of different health issues that can cause a cat to urinate outside of the box.

        Most behaviorists won’t even give you suggestions on how to curb this behavior until there has been a full clean bill of health… but yes, more litter boxes is important, no matter how many there are, put down more. and making sure there aren’t cats visiting the yard and getting into the windows and infringing on territory

    3. Sandra, I’m so sorry I missed this before now. You’ve gotten some good advice (thank you so much, everyone!) If you need more advice (or just want to vent), please do.

      1. It’s okay, Robyn. Honestly – I knew most of this before. But since my mom is the owner of those kitties and she won’t listen to me much, there isn’t much I can do.
        I will talk to my grandma, maybe she is willing to take the cats. She is mostly at home and this is what they need, a person to hang out with. Also a vet checkup. They haven’t gone to the vet for a looong time…
        Unfortunately, in this country, Estonia, we are struggling to get out of the Soviet ways of animal/pet keeping. Animals were supposed to be useful and if they weren’t, the cats, for example, were just drowned or shot. Until this day a lot of people see animals as a piece of property. I want it – I take it. I don’t want it – I will put it down, give it away or just dump the damn thing somewhere. Misbehaving dogs were mostly shot. Sad and very stupid.
        At least nowadays most pet owners have their pets neutered and microchipped, animal shelters only find homes for animals who have been neutered – makes life so much easier. Vet service is still very expensive for an average estonian person. I do hope the situation is better for you guys, who live in the US…

  14. Great post Robyn! Happy Boxing Day to all!

    Sandra-Is mom being away a recent event? I think the cat may be stressed and upset by that if it is. I have no offers of advice except to find someone/something which the animal finds of comfort and have them/it hang out with her more often. My cat gets annoyed and stressed when I leave for extended periods of time (like vacation for 2 wks). Even though I have others check on her and feed her and clean her box, she would still rather me not leave. She peed on my love seat a few yrs back. That was the only reason I could see why she did, and she hasn’t done anything like that since. We had her checked for health issues (you might want to double check that) but there was nothing wrong except us going away. Cats are picky. Good luck!

    1. Yes, my mom being away is a recent event. The cats spend most of their time alone and there is basically no good solution to this. They get fed and looked after, but they have no one to hang out with (my brother wont let them in his room). I did tell my mom that they are probably stressed, because she is away, but she won’t believe me.
      I live almost 3 hours away from my mom and there isn’t much I can do, besides talking to her. I’ll tell her about taking them to the vet for a checkup.

      1. Hi Sandra, Don’t know if you’ll see this since it’s from yesterday, but just wanted to say that the above advice is all very good, and add a couple of things. The Feliway won’t hurt, but it isn’t terribly cheap. Amazon sometimes has decent deals. You’ll want the diffuser (at least 2), and try to plug them in where they sleep and hang out.

        Make sure when the pee gets cleaned up, that your mom uses a non-ammonia based cleaner, so that it doesn’t re-attract the cat.

        Any possibility of enrichment activities for the cats? Is there a bird feeder outside that could amuse them? Does you mom have a Roku or similar for the TV? Youtube has a number of long-running vids for cats featuring birds, squirrels, etc. Some of them run 4-5 hours.

        My mom’s cats were behavioral pee-ers. It could get pretty bad, and unfortunately she was never consistent enough with various tactics to get them to stop, although it could be reduced. But she adopted these cats (purebred Ragdolls), who were given up in the first place because of the pee issues (she wasn’t told that was why). So it was ingrained in them very early and we don’t know why. I would come to visit a few times a year and usually brought my own cats. Outwardly they all got along well, but once one of her cats came into the bedroom I was in and peed on me while I slept. They were definitely of the “revenge is best served cold” school of pee.

        1. I will visit my mom again in a week or so. I cleaned the entire house (next time I’ll go, I will buy a special cleaning agent for cat pee), threw out everything they like to pee on (plastic bags and clothes and dish towels). I don’t imagine that placing the cats into a new home will fix this issue – it can also get worse and most people don’t want to deal with problematic cats.

          My mom uses a cleaner that for me smells even worse than the cat pee itself.

          Anyways, thanks for the advice.

  15. I was loving all the picture of kitties in boxes, so the picture of Robyn in the box totally took me by surprise! I love it!

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