Our nudgie popsicle

From living life as a stray to the life of a homed kitty cat, in the blink of an eye.  

Nudge

My little Nudgicles is my wee cutie pie.  He was born in our barn along with his sister. His mum was feeding them and we were fine with that, but then she died in a trap set by the mayor’s office to cull the wild cats in our street.  So we had 2 new born kittens in our barn.  What were we to do?? Well we fed them, kept them at arms length.  Just until they were able to fend for themselves. I did some study and discovered wild cats rarely fend for themselves properly. Poor wee things.  But these 2 were wild.  Ferril.. They would not let us near them.  There’s no way we could de flee or anything and a visit to the vet would have been fraught with god knows what.  They were starving crazy kittens and we had no clue what to do.  But we named them.  Smudge and Nudge and fed them in our barn where they were born and were sleeping in our woodpile.

But then one day Andy was backing out the car and their game of chasey meant wee smudge was under his tires.  She died.  Wee Nudge was out of his mind.  In fact we thought he’d died or was severely injured because we didn’t see or hear him for 36 hrs after Smudgy’s death.   He didn’t eat, he didn’t meow.   Finally, he popped up.  There he was in the barn, traumatised.  So we fed him but he didn’t play like he had been with Smudgy, he stayed in the barn, only ate when we were looking over him rather than fighting for food with his sister. It was sad.

Very sad.  

Because he meowed and meowed and meowed.  He sniffed and sniffed where she’d died.  Heart breaking actually (and I’m NOT a cat person).

Then one day he changed.  He demanded our attention.  He was the most incredibly affectionate cat.  So we were touching him and playing with him, but he stayed in the barn.  He was happy there sleeping in the woodpile.  One week on there were wild cats in our barn eating his damn food!!  Mangy looking things.  Gross.   and we thought we needed to do something to protect him so we made the huge step of moving wee Nudgy inside.  With the help of Andy, and the NZ fam I moved him in. Big huge step for one that’s never had a pet.  Ever.

That was the day before yesterday.  These are photos from tonight.  He’s settled into life inside rather too easily!!!  Not a peep out of him at night, he just is so so so happy.  Which makes us happy.  

Mexican chicken

We are so into Mexican cooking at the mo.  We have sourced a supplier of really amazing smoked chipotle chillie and are trying to adapt our knowledge of spice to recreate those smoky heady sharp deep but essentially fresh and zingy Mexican flavours.   

Tonight’s was chicken with spice and smoke fresh and very very yum.  In the cave. On a hot summers night.  Very very awesome.