Rescued Kitten Wanders Away - Owners Upset

KUALA LUMPUR, Thurs. - Owners of a recently rescued kitten were upset when the kitten went wandering off and didn't come home. The kitten, named "Cat" (or, "Koo-Ching") was found over the weekend extremely dirty, thin and with infections in both eyes resulting in its inability to use the left eye (pictured, right).

After a short trip to the animal hospital for a thorough check-up, the owners brought her home, gave her a bath and attempted to feed her. The vet had informed them that she was to be isolated in a cage to prevent the infection from spreading to their other cats, Harun and Thomas.

"She was very distressed in the carrier, meowing away, but we still kept her in there anyway. We put food and water in there but she didn't eat any," the owner, who calls herself "Mummy", told us.

"It's very upsetting that she's left because she was just starting to recover. She didn't eat the IAMS kitten food that we got, but when we switched to FRISKIES then she ate with gusto. She also started drinking water.

"We decided to let her out of the carrier for a few hours at a time to play with her and let her walk around. She found some areas around the garage that kept her relatively safe from the bigger cats," Mummy continued.

Investigations reveal that Thomas was initially hostile to Koo-Ching (seen here playing with Mummy's younger son, Adik) and even once hissed at her. Harun was the more curious one and would be sniffing away but Thomas immediately disliked her and even stayed away the day after she arrived to register his protest.

On Wednesday, Mummy let Koo-Ching free to walk about while showing her the litter box, the food tray and generally tried to show her around - like an orientation, almost. She seemed quite happy and rested under the cabinet or occasionally under the shoe rack.

"So we thought it would be ok to not put her in the carrier anymore. She was quite content and it didn't occur to us that she would go off. My auntie said she saw Koo-Ching sleeping at the patio the night before we discovered she was gone. All our cats have always been stray cats, or offsprings of stray cats, but they were the ones who adopted us. This is the first time we adopted a stray cat," a clearly upset Mummy told us.

Daddy - Mummy's husband - said, "I think we should have kept her in the carrier longer. I hope she's ok."

So do we.

The Holidays Are Here...

I have three words for you: OH. MY. GOD.

We really did need God's help last Friday to get a parking spot at Mid Valley Megamall. Wan and I were nursing cabin fever and did the unthinkable and took the boys (sans maid) to MVM. Of course it didn't occur to either of us that spending 45 minutes to find a parking spot would be expected as it was the last day of school AND Thomas (the Tank Engine, not the cat) had made his debut appearance already.

As I like to say, "Walau-ehh..." I considered giving up and just telling the boys, "Sorry, no parking" but I'm not familiar with the basement parking of MVM so I wasn't sure which entrance to the mall would get me to the pay station.

Anyway, eventually made it. The boys wanted some makan at Pizza Hut so I obliged. By the time we were done eating, it was already 5pm so Wan and I decided it was best to leave. It wasn't quite so zoo-like when we got out of the mall.


So, it's the school holidays now and Abang is taking his first sleepover at Atok's house. He wanted Adik to sleep there with him too, but that might be a bit much for the grandparents. Before Adik and I left this evening, Atok and I took both boys for a walk. They were so happy! Abang was such a gentleman, he kept offering me his hand to climb steps and manoeuvre various obstacles along the way. (Made me feel like an old fogey but heck, he was so cute, who cares?) He did the same for Adik, too, whenever I asked him to please "help Adik".

The best part was when Adik and I were about to leave and Abang wanted to say goodbye to him. Abang went up to Adik and said, "Bye Johan. I love you." and then kissed his arm!

That's when the grandparents all melted into the driveway...

Abang to the Rescue

Well, Abang did it! He rescued his first kitten. I suppose if you want to get technical, it was Daddy who had to cross the drain behind Nenek's house to get the little kitten and it was Mummy who actually took it to the vet, but we'll give Abang credit for this rescue.

He was very insistent about "taking care of the kitten" and wanting to "teman the kitten" but we decided it would be better not to have him near the kitten until it had been seen by the vet and also after a bath. Abang's kitten was in quite a sorry state when we got it; very thin, dirty and with an infection in both eyes resulting in one of them practically covered by the third eyelid.

One trip to the animal hospital later, she (yes, the vet confirmed it's a girl!) was slightly cleaner, de-wormed, given some medication and the ok to go home. After giving her a thorough bath, we administered the antibiotics and eye drops for her, something I will have to do daily for the coming week.

Abang is naturally very pleased that his kitten is "doing great!" as he told Ant J when she asked how his kitten was doing. However, she's not eaten any of her IAMS kitten food but only drank some milk that Daddy put for her. She's currently kept in the carrier to keep her isolated from Harun and Thomas so they don't get infected.

The only sad thing about this whole episode is that Thomas seems to have merajuk and run away. He was around very early this morning but we haven't seen him since. He must be upset because we put the carrier with its new occupant in his corner. I guess the search party (i.e. Mummy) will be going out to look for him tomorrow.

Sleep? Who Needs Sleep?

I know, I've mentioned it before (in fact, more than once), but it just amazes and frustrates me how the boys are so against taking their naps.

They will fight tooth and nail just so that they don't fall asleep. Today, on the way back from 1 Utama, both boys were clearly tired - maybe even overtired. After Abang's class at Tumble Tots they had a pretty good snack at McDonalds (with Cuz and AJ!) so it seemed like a very good recipe for falling asleep on the way home.

But, noooooo..... they fussed, they hummed, they snacked, they chatted, they sang, they played with ... with ... whatever they got their little hands on just so that they won't have to lean back against their seats. Because leaning back and relaxing is very dangerous if you're sleepy but don't want to actually sleep.

I suppose in a way it's good that they didn't fall asleep in the car on the way home because they'd be sleeping with 1 Utama cooties. When we got home, they both got bathed and fed and then it took all of 10 minutes before they were off to dreamland.

It's so funny right? I mean, if I were told that I MUST have a nap every afternoon, why, I'd jump at the chance! Switch the air-conditioner on, put on some Light FM in the background and off I go. Dreamland, here I come! Add to that, I get told that I should be getting between 11-12 hours of sleep at night - phwoaar, very nice. Thank you very much. In fact, I may even be kiasu enough to try and haggle for more: "12 hours only, ah? 13 can or not?"

Anyway, I managed to catch a photo of the 4 boys at 1 Utama today. It's not often we get the 4 of them sitting nicely together long enough to take a photo.

Oh No! I'm Raising a Hippie.

UPDATE: At Nenek's house yesterday, Abang almost rescued his first kitten! The poor little kitten was obviously very poorly and a bit disoriented and Abang got the carrier out from Ant J's room, all ready to take the kitten to the animal hospital. Unfortunately, she was in the neighbour's compound and the gate was locked so we couldn't get to her (not that we would have trespassed if the gate wasn't locked). I'm sure it's just a matter of time before he does rescue a little pet.

Abang and Adik both love eating fried fish, especially freshly fried small ikan bawal. They go after it like they haven't eaten in days.

While chomping away on his fish, Abang would sometimes put on a very sad look on his face and say, "Kesian this fish, kan?"

When I ask him why, he says, "Because we catch it and then now we eat it. Kesian the fish."

I half expect him to become a vegetarian when he's older. Or he could go the extreme of one of the characters in the movie "Notting Hill" (I think that's the movie, anyway) who only eats fruits or vegetables that have fallen off the tree, rather than plucked off a tree because plucking a fruit or vegetable would mean "the carrots were murdered."

He must be taking after his hippie-mom who endures strange looks from Tesco cashiers when she declines plastic bags and instead whips out her reusable shopping bags - green coloured ones, no less. Abang is already tut-tutting at people who don't park or drive properly; now he's even taken to picking up rubbish at the Tesco car park and throwing it away in its proper rubbish bin!

The latest incident happened last weekend just after we had parked the car and were walking into Tesco. Abang spotted an empty vitagen bottle that had been left on the floor and said, "Some people just don't know how to throw rubbish properly." It's good to know that he's not just a talk-er but a do-er because he proceeded to pick it up, hang on to it until he found a bin and then disposed of it "properly".

I wonder if he'll be hugging trees anytime soon. He already kisses the bawal! But then immediately gobbles it down...

The Adik Dictionary: An Adult's Guide to Understanding My Son

Adik is really, really trying to talk. He's managed to do 2- and sometimes 3-word sentences. For example, he might say, "Nak Daddy poong." That means he wants the spoon that Daddy's using. Or, "Mummy kak." Here, he's asking me to open ('bukak') something.

I decided to compile a dictionary of Adik's vocabulary, although I'm sure I'm missing some.

aa-bih = Habis (finish)
aa-woon = Harun
a-kit = Sakit (pain)
eh-kong = Air Cond
eh-kut = Biskut (Biscuit)
ek-down = Sit down
gi-gert = Yogurt
ka-kut = Takut (scared)
kak = Bukak (open)
kokok = Keropok
mee-mo = Nemo
na-nak = Tak Nak (don't want)
neh-ning = Raining
oh-dan = Hujan (rain)
oh-dang = Udang (prawn)
poong = Spoon
puh = Kipper (a cartoon character dog)
tin = Train
ting = Kencing (pee)
to-tope = Tutup (close)
weh = Wear or Underwear

Currently his favourite show is Finding Nemo, but there are some scenes in that movie which are a little scary for him. There's the opening scene when the barracuda attacks Nemo's parents and also the scene where Bruce the shark appears. Each time he watches the movie, he says, "Ka-kut! Ka-kut!" and will pull Daddy's hands over his face to cover his eyes.

Sometimes he gets so frustrated when we don't understand what he wants - hence the dictionary!

Another First

Abang came home from school the other day and told us that he has "exams". I know, I thought the same thing too: What kind of a twisted mind would impose exams on a 4-year old?

Later, I figured that they're not exams per se, they're more like "assessments" for teachers to know what the children have learnt, what they've improved on, what are their areas of improvement. This is so that they can report back to the parents on how the child is doing. It's not really an "exam".

That's my guess, anyway. We'll see how it goes. He seemed rather excited about it, probably because he hasn't a clue what "exam" means, rather like the first time he had "homework". He was supposed to have his assessment yesterday but he missed school because he slept at Atok's house on Wednesday night and Atok was supposed to send him to school on Thursday morning.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday night, Atok had a very bad case of constipation requiring Daddy and me to come over at midnight to send him to the hospital. The next morning, Atok told me, "I've never experienced anything quite like this. Any day, I'll take diarrhoea over constipation."

Which gave me an idea to revise Ant J's curse to "May those %&#$ not rest while nursing perpetual severe constipation."

Anyway, back to this "exam" thing, we'll see what happens next week. I suspect it's only the older children - the 5- and 6-year olds, who will be having assessments. After all, what kind of a twisted mind would impose exams on a 4-year old?

No Nap Boys

A couple of weeks ago, Adik had his first taste of a no-nap day. Both he and Abang were at Atok's house that Saturday because the electrician had to do some wiring and drilling at our house and we figured it was best that the boys weren't around for that.

Adik was so busy playing that he absolutely refused to be put down for a nap. When it was mid-afternoon and Atok tried rocking him to sleep and almost succeeded, Abang barged into the room and that was that. As expected, when we fetched Adik to come home (Abang slept overnight at Atok's house) he fell asleep in the car on the way back.

Slight dilemma for us, as he had not had dinner yet nor had a bath from a full day of playing. I decided to take the risk and wake him up for a shower and dinner when we arrived. After his dinner and shower, he was a bit reluctant to go back to sleep immediately so we let him watch his favourite show, 'Finding Nemo'. It just took half and hour of lying down with Daddy while watching TV before he was ready to go back to bed. This is what an overtired 21 month old boy looks like.

Today looked like it was going to be another no-nap day and this time for both the boys. It's quite normal for Abang to not have nap in the daytime, but we have to endure some, shall we say, not very good behaviour as a result of being tired but refusing to nap.

There's also the issue of Abang napping too late in the day which sometimes makes it difficult for him to go down for the night. However, today, by 3:30pm, the crankiness level was way up (for the boys too, not just the adults) and I packed the boys up in the car and we went out for a drive.

Less than half and hour later, we were back with both boys fast asleep. Finally, some peace and quiet!

Happy Mothers Day to All Mommies!

Here's hoping that all Mommies out there had a good Mothers Day.

We had a nice Thai lunch in Subang Jaya, our regular haunt for occasions like this. There was our family of four, my sister's family of four, Uncle Is and Ant G, Nenek and Ant J, my parents and my auntie. This restaurant is really cool. A few years ago we had a nice Fathers Day lunch there and they gave a hat (like the type fishermen wear) as a present for the "Daddy" and we gave it to Atok. He still wears it till today.

This time, they presented a little orchid plant to the "Mummy" which was given to Nenek. It should do well, Nenek has bright green thumbs.

Other than the nice lunch, it was pretty much like any regular day for me, right up to the part when Adik tipped over the watermelon juice on him (and me) at the restaurant and not being able to eat for trying to get Adik to eat without causing anymore damage.

So once some of the other adults had finished eating they took one or both boys for a walk and I could finally have my lunch. Sounds like a normal day to me!

How Disgusting!

This is a slight deviation from my usual posting about how cute our 2 boys are, but I really have to blog this.

On Friday afternoon, my sister was caught in a traffic jam which took her 45 minutes to get from Handimart in Sec. 14 to the Rothmans roundabout. For those who know PJ, you will know that you can usually whizz down that road in about 15 seconds.

When she had almost reached the roundabout, a Big Black BMW SUV tried to squeeze past her Waja, in the process scraping the right side of her car from the petrol tank all the way to her door. As soon as she heard the god-awful scraping sounds, she frantically tried to get their attention, basically to tell them to STOP DRIVING BECAUSE YOU'RE RUINING MY CAR.

She managed to make eye contact with the passenger while pointing to her car, and eventually, they stopped. They stopped just before snapping off the side mirror but after it had been scraped. Obviously my sister had to move first because if the Big Black BMW SUV had moved any further, my sister's side mirror would definitely have broken off.

Then the Big Black BMW SUV passenger signaled to my sister pull over at the side of the road. She found an opening and stopped there.

Those Big Black BMW SUV a$$h0le$ then just DROVE OFF!!!

My very close friends will know the 3-letter abbreviation I like to use in these situations, but for the purposes of this blog, I'll just say "HOW DISGUSTING". Honestly. There are some really disgusting people out there.

My sister and I tried to think up various curses for them but she was too disgusted and needed a coffee to calm down and I couldn't remember Ant J's favourite curse - something about The Dung from A Thousand Flea-infested Camels Raining Upon You or something like that.

Anyway, I have since come up with a few of my own:

1. May the Pee of A Thousand Tomcats Saturate the Leather Steering Wheel of Your Big Black BMW SUV.

2. May the Alam Flora Truck Do the Same to You that You Did to My Sister and then Tip Over the Rubbish into Your Big Black BMW SUV, Intentionally or Otherwise.

3. May the Poop of A Dozen Stray Dogs Cake onto the Tyres of Your Big Black BMW SUV and Cause You to Gag and Vomit While Driving to the Nearest Tyre Shop.

My sister's not had a good month - a couple of weeks ago, her car (yes, the same unfortunate Waja!) had the window smashed in. Then, this happened, and as mentioned, after a 45 minute traffic jam WHICH was after a 3-hour trip to University Hospital getting Cuz's arm put in a cast because he sprained it when he fell running around after school waiting for my parents to fetch him. (Daddy's wondering if he was running around playing fetch.)

Cuz reckons the Big Black BMW SUV had Perak number plates with some 8's in it, but can't be sure. Anyway, who cares. Like my sister said, if bad luck befalls those a$$hole$, "we ain't gonna be crying."

We return to our regularly scheduled programme on Monday.

The Classic Grandparent

First of all, before I start, let me just say that we love Nenek. She's a great mother-in-law to me and a wonderful grandmother to the boys. There's nothing she wouldn't do for them.

Or, rather, there's nothing she wouldn't let the boys do.

Allow me to illustrate. When Abang was younger, before Adik came along, she used to try and feed him whenever we went over to their house. It's the typical Grandmother Method of Feeding, which is chasing after them all over the house with a bowl and spoon in the midst of their running around and playing.

When we suggest to her to put him in his highchair for his meal, she says, "But he likes it like this..." ("Dia dah suka macam ni..." to be exact.)

Never mind, we figured since she doesn't get to see him very often, getting spoiled by his grandmother on the odd occasion isn't so bad.

Adik knows exactly how to wrap Nenek around his little finger. Whenever we go over, his feet hardly touch the floor! Ok, that's a slight exaggeration but she does carry him around a lot. Less so now, as he gets bigger.

Once, when we went to their house, they had some relatives visiting and Adik wasn't too sure what to do about these strangers cooing over him. So he struggled to get out my clutches, ran to the kitchen whining, "Nenekkkkk.....", stopped right at her feet, put his arms up in the Carry Me pose and gave her this lost puppy dog look.

Of course she obliged!

He wants to play with the fly swatter, no problem. He wants to use her bathroom slippers all over the house, boleh. He wants to play outside without wearing his shoes, well, what's the problem?

Most recently, he was eyeing some cookies in the glass cookie jar on the dining table and proceeded to climb up onto the table. Before you know it, he was actually standing on the table! I only caught the situation when he was already standing on the table and she was right there with him, putting her arm around him so he doesn't fall (I guess).

First, I scolded him. Then it occurred to me he's just doing what he can get away with. So I pleaded with her, "Ala, please la, Nenek, don't let him stand on the table..."

"But he wanted to..." ("Dia dah nak...") was her response!

But she also realised that it's not a good thing for her grandson to be standing on the dining table so she tried to get him down. "Come, come, let's get down."

He refused. "He doesn't want to come down (Dia taknak turun)," she told me in a rather Eh-How-Ah? way.

Nenek also lets Adik and Abang feed the stray cats behind her house with Rabbit's expensive IAMS cat food. Which, honestly, I thought was ok but apparently Ant J had issues with that. There are other stories too, but, I'll only blog them if Ant J promises not have a go at Nenek about them :)

I Love my Kids!

They were being so cute today. I took them to IOI mall (yes, my auntie came along too - I'm not suicidal you know) to check out the curtain shop there. Our 7-year old curtains are, literally, koyak so we need to replace them asap.

It being a curtain shop, there wasn't much for the boys to see. After some time, Adik was getting quite antsy in his stroller and wanted to roam free. Abang was content to explore the shop which, it turns out, has a lot more than curtains!

In a bid to get them to not - or, rather, to stop - running around the shop, I asked Adik to please hold Abang's hand; and for Abang to please hold Adik's hand. (I figured that ought to slow 'em down.)



They immediately held out their hands to each other and walked around hand-in-hand. Alaaa, so cute. Of course that didn't stop Abang from trying to run but he was somewhat slowed down by Adik and in the end it looked like Abang was pulling Adik all over the place. Looked a bit "untidy" but never mind, it did slow them down a bit, it did look cute and as we left they both said a nice "Thank you" and "BYE!" to the sales people.

So I belanja them some McDonalds after that and gave them some play time at the play area where Abang made a friend. How not to chaeng right? So awesomely cute and well behaved. Although I suspect my auntie was thinking less of me, seeing as I was more interested in taking pictures of my children running around the shop than stopping them from actually running around the shop.

Later at home I took Adik to go pee in my bathroom. I'm starting to toilet train him after getting hints from our pediatrician at our last visit. "Can he tell you yet that he needs to go?" he asked me. "Um, sometimes," I replied trying to put an end to this line of questioning. "Ok, that's good." He just left it at that... Dammit ... I know what you mean, Doc, and I know you know that I know what you mean!

Anyway, it's not so bad since there are 3 adults at home in the daytime - me, maid, auntie. I figured I might as well start now when there are many hands at home. So, after his visit to the loo, I naturally had to do some clean up in the toilet (his aim ain't quite so good, y'know) so I let him out of the bathroom. Since the TV in my room happened to be on at that time, he decided to make himself very comfortable on my bed. Going commando under my covers - good thing he had just gone to pee.

And he's quite the poser too, it seems. Must be his brother's influence!

Smart or Sassy: Who Can Tell?

A few days ago, out of the blue, Abang said to me, "Mummy, I want cookies."

I wasn't sure what he meant, so I asked, "Do you want the cookie crisp that we bought at Petronas last week? You haven't eaten that yet."

"No la. The other one la." He was starting to get impatient (wonder where he got that from?).

"Um, which cookie do you mean?" I wasn't stringing him along, I was really stumped.

"Yang tu lah, yang cookie tu lah. The one Ant J make for me."

*Ting* The light bulb has come on!

"Oh, ok. Do you mean the big, chocolate chip cookies?"

"Ha, yes, yes. I want to ask Ant J to make."

So I dialled her number and got him to talk to her and ask her himself. Of course, later I had to translate his request so that she actually understood what exactly he wanted.

Bless her, she actually made it! Only thing is, Abang slept over at Atok's house over the weekend. So this morning, when it was time to go to Nenek's house, I called Abang (at Atok's house) to ask if he wanted to go to Nenek's house.

"No, thanks!" Was his short reply.

"But Ant J has made you the cookies you want, you know? We go la, and have some of her cookies."

"Um... but ... you can bring back for me, right?" Smart kid.

"Uh..."

"Ok, bye Mummy!" Sassy, too.

Adik is also quite the cunning little toddler. Here's a regular scene from A Day in Our House:

Adik tries to play with the wall switch. Adik gets reprimanded by Mummy. Mummy moves Adik away from the plug point and distracts him with something else.

Repeat, oh, about 4 times.

Come the 5th time, before the reprimand starts, Adik runs off towards the CD rack and bookshelf. Adik starts pulling down CDs and books, creating a pile of CDs and books on the floor.

"Aiyo, Adik, what are you doing?" Mummy grumbles and mutters as she starts putting the CDs and books back. "You better come and help Mummy put these back."

Hold on, he's not there. He's gone back to the wall switch! Aaarrrrghh!

Has he been reading the same books? The ones that advocate the "distraction" method of disciplining? Must be la!

"But I was just practising..."

Abang was showing me what he has learnt lately from his Mandarin teacher at kindergarten. He was demonstrating how to write the various strokes, and also what they're called. I thought it's pretty cool that he's actually learning something in that class. I did wonder, initially, whether he would be a bit lost in his Mandarin class but I guess not.

Anyway, that reminded me of the time I went to Shanghai with Daddy some years ago. He had some meetings to attend there and so I tagged along. I was so excited, because knowing some basic Mandarin I figured that was a great opportunity to improve my grasp of the language. Even though the trip was only 4 days long, I still managed to pick up a lot of Mandarin - spoken and written - because everything there is in Mandarin.

So I practised whenever I could, with the hotel staff, shop assistants, at the airport, etc. (Not with taxi drivers, though, because that one could *really* get me into trouble. I would just use the card provided by the hotel which has their name and address written in Mandarin, point to it and say, "Go there.") One funny incident I recall was asking one of the hotel staff about the swimming pool. He took us past the gym and then to the pool. The whole place was dark and he had to go find the light switch somewhere. As he was away, I spotted the pool and quite excitedly exclaimed something like "Hey there it is!"

And the hotel staff, in a rather panicky voice, yelled in Mandarin, "No, no! No water! No water!"

I was thinking, like, DUH, we're fully clothed, we're not going to just jump into an empty pool! It turns out that the hotel was so new that the pool didn't even have any water yet. In fact, the gym equipment had not even been plugged in to the wall!

So the other incident, which Daddy will never let me forget, was when we were having breakfast at the hotel. It's your standard buffet breakfast, complete with the egg station where you can order freshly cooked eggs to your liking.

Unlike Malaysian hotels which are halal and have chicken ham and beef bacon bits, obviously this hotel had real ham and real bacon bits, alongside the chopped onions, capsicum and mushrooms. So off I rattled in Mandarin to the waiter, asking for an "omelette without meat, just the vegetables".

Feeling rather proud of myself for practising my Mandarin, I waited for my freshly cooked omelette. Lo and behold, what did I get but a freshly cooked omelette with none of the vegetables and all of the meat which I cannot eat!

Daddy laughed SO loud and SO long and for the rest of the trip kept poking fun at me for "showing off".

Come to think of it, he still does.

Footballers in the Family

Abang got a really cool little football and a set of mini cones for his birthday. It's just the right size for him and Adik to be kicking around the garden. (It's been banished from inside the house.)

While Abang's getting the hang of kicking the football, Adik seems preoccupied with putting the cones back together. His, erm, neat streak is "kicking" in, shall we say, and he just can't stand to see the cones all over the place. Which in fact, it's not, because we placed them to be like goal posts.

But it's just too untidy for Adik! So that in itself has become the game - I arrange the cones as goal posts and Adik stacks them up again.

Still, it's fun to run around the garden with the boys, playing with their new toy. Harun even joins in for a bit of exercise! Check out Harun our Football Cat.

(I just realised that Adik's garb makes him look like a real footballer!)