A miniature tiger in my garden

Harri is almost 5 months old now and her growth appears to have slowed a little. She’s still not that big, about 2kgs maybe, she’s getting too big for my pasta scales! Scottish Folds only get to about 4kgs anyway and my vet told me that as soon as the weather begins to improve (southern hemisphere = winter right now) it would be OK to begin supervised outside excursions.

She needs it too, the little zoomer, loves a good run through the house! She can make the jump to any of the window sils, was climbing my bookcase just last night and in the time it takes me to climb the stairs when I get home she’s already been up, down and back up again!

Hurry up Mum-human, my food bowl is empty!

Our new favourite foods include warmed wheetbix with milk, mashed potato, and overlocker thread hoki fish.

I feed her biscuits too, human food is an occasional treat, tell me off all you want, I am sure my vet would too if I told him 😉 but how boring must biscuits be all day, every day? Our family cat ate rice risotto, Watties spaghetti, pretty much whatever we ate and lived to be 18 😀

Her new thing (there is always a new thing added to the ever growing list) is to wait for one of her humans behind the door way and when they walk past, leap at the back of their legs to mock hamstring them.

My little indoor tiger!

Lucky for Harri we had always decided that our cat would be an outdoor kitty. Lucky for us she can run off all that energy exploring outside while we are at work during the day. We have her micro-chipped and as soon as our kitchen renovation gets underway our new back door will get a micro-chip controlled cat flap.

Until then I want to introduce her to our backyard slowly, so she gets to know her way around. I still remember the night we bought her home and she got lost just by going round the other side of the couch!

You can snigger at my kitten-babying all you want but I love my Harriet. I haven’t really heard any cat fights since living at our new place but I do see other cats using our backyard as their own personal short-cut so Harri needs to know exactly how to get back inside if she needs to.

So the plan was to buy Harri a harness and take her for little walks to familiarise her with the back yard and surrounds but then I saw this:

I thought. “I could do that!”, and left the idea floating inside my head.

During the failed WSBN Levana trip a brilliant idea struck me, you might remember this photo:

On the right is 40cm of faux tiger fur that I bought for a total of $6.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

I’ll just wait for the laughter to settle down.

Are you done? Good 😉

I printed off Veanna’s pattern and held it up to Harri…hmmm… Harri is much smaller than Boffi.

So I made some modifications: one SKA (short kitten adjustment) and an LTBA (less tubby belly adjustment) later and we were away:

The inside is plain calico and I had the webbing and other bits and bobs in my stash.

Curious Kiwi Top Tip: Never throw away an old bag without cutting off the hardware!

“What is this green stuff?”

“Why are you laughing human?”

Harri was not a fan of her harness at first but after we got outside she was sufficiently distracted by grass, wet feet, birds and bushes to almost forget about it.

I say almost because sometimes she would walk a bit funny and twice she just sort of fell over like the fainting goats.

It fits her better than I thought but I still watched her like a hawk just in case.

“Grrr! Queen of the…Backyard!”

“Ugh, this green stuff is making my paws wet!”

We spent about 20 minutes outside, exploring half the garden and smelling each individual blade of grass, and then my smart little mini-tiger led me back to the door and inside again all by herself.

Awww!

I think she enjoyed her excursion. The breeder did tell me when we picked her up that the mother wasn’t big on spending time outside but I think it’s only fair that Harri has a choice. I hope after a few more outings I can get her to follow me out un-harnessed and see what happens.