‘Time Spent with Cats…’

‘…is never wasted,’ so quoted Sigmund Freud. Being an ailurophile (I had to look the word up), or a lover of cats, I wholly agree!

For an early birthday celebration, I decided to treat my mum and David to coffee and cake at the recently opened Cat Cafe in Bold Street, Liverpool. I pre-booked our hourly session at the cafe, at £12 per person. This includes unlimited drinks while cakes and pastries were an additional cost.

Our time slot was 10 o’ clock, and even at this time the cafe seemed busy with parties coming and going. To keep the resident cats safe, there are three doors which patrons have to go through. After being booked in, a pass to note down any additional spends given and the dos and the don’ts listed, we were admitted.

Cat Cafe – Bold Street, Liverpool

Gallery

The rules

Resident cats

More rules!

The Liverpool branch is on three floors. We perused the decor and the many hiding places for the cats before pondering where to sit. On the first floor there were lots of comfy looking sofas but David chose the ground floor part of the cafe as this was where most of the cat action was happening!

We took our seats close to the kitchen. The choice of table seemed lucrative as I had not long sat down when Rose, a long-haired tortoiseshell came over and made a bee-line for my lap. She happily sat and suckled me for 10 minutes.

Christine and Rose

Christine and Rose

Christine and Rose

We ordered hot drinks and a selection of cakes. Mum had a toasted teacake, I a scone with cream and jam and David chose the cake of the day, which was a large slice of chocolate-orange cake.

Cappuccino

Scone

Chocolate orange cake

Toasted Tea-cake

Many of the cats as you can imagine were curled up asleep. All was quiet until the food was served and from a towering cat bed two cats emerged. Dobby the Sphynx and Sebastian the Siamese! The hairless Dobby sported a black jumper with orange bobbles to keep him warm while Sebastian cheekily tried his luck pawing at our selection of cakes. It was funny interacting with the cats who all seemed friendly.

Liverpool Cat Cafe

David and Rose

Liverpool Cat Cafe

Dobby the Sphynx

Sebastian the Siamese.

Liverpool Cat Cafe

Liverpool Cat Cafe

We took many photographs and spent a full hour with the cats of Liverpool’s Cat Cafe. I am happy to report we all enjoyed ourselves and would definitely visit again, even if we were scratched and bitten for milk and food! :p

Have you visited a cat cafe? If so what were your impressions?

Thanks for reading,

Christine x

12 Hours of Day #10

It is with many thanks to Louise at Ramblings of a Roachling, for informing me of the future dates for #photoanhour on Instagram. I knew there was one planned for when we came back from holidaying in Scotland. So on Saturday 22nd September I logged onto Instagram and noticed other Instagramers posting about #photoanhour. I decided to join in. So here’s what I got up to during my 12 hours of day!

Photo an Hour – 22nd September 2018

8am to 9am:

My Saturday began like any other day, with coffee and granola. However my day could so easily have begun at 6.30am when we were rudely woken up by headbutts from Artie wanting us to get up!!

Cereal at 8am

Shopping at 9am

9am to 10am:

This Saturday we went shopping at Asda for our weekly shop. We haven’t been here for a while, as we have been ordering a delivery online most weeks. It was a shock to the system to be honest! We had become used to our food being delivered every week!

10am to 11am:

Since we missed Artie’s 4th birthday, as we were away in Scotland, we decided to buy him a present of a new scratch post. The other one he had had since he was a kitten and was looking sadly worse for wear!

Artie’s new toy!

Purple Carrot! Liverpool

11am to 12pm:

We took a visit to #purplecarrot for organic Discovery Apples. 😁 As soon as I knew they had them in stock, I was round there at the soonest opportunity! You all know by now my penchant for Discovery Apples! 😀

12pm to 1pm:

We popped in for a visit to David’s family and received cuddles from their Newfoundland Bennie. 😁

Visiting Bennie

Bought finch food at Lister Drive

1pm to 2pm:

On our way home, we stopped off at Lister Drive Fisheries and bought some finch food for our aviary.

2pm to 3pm: 

Lunch was with a cup of tea and sampling the Discovery Apples I had bought from #purplecarrot. I love the cat ornament David’s mum gave us from her recent holiday.

Lunch and gifts

Vacuuming with Henry!

3pm to 4pm:

I had a date with Henry! A quick clean of the house was much needed!

4pm to 5pm:

I took to chopping lots of vegetables, ready to be roasted for the evening’s dinner. 😊 We were making roasted vegetable parcels. Always a hit in our house!

Vegetables to be roasted

The table is set for dinner

5pm to 6pm:

While the vegetables were roasting, I set the table. I like a nice, romantically lit dining room.

6pm to 7pm:

Dinner of scrumptious roasted vegetable parcels with salad was mmm… tasty!😁

Roasted Vegetable Parcels

Catching up on blogging

7pm to 8pm:

I spent the remainder of the evening catching up with composing blog posts.

How did you spend your Saturday?

Thanks to Janey and Louisa for setting up the challenge, and thank you for reading,

Christine x

RSPB – Leighton Moss

Itching to go out walking again, I was looking for ideas for places to go to this weekend. I don’t know why but sightings of bearded tits at RSPB Leighton Moss popped up on my Facebook wall. So I decided to look at their website and planned on taking a few hours walking along their trails of woodland and reed-bed habitats.

Leighton Moss is the largest reed-bed in the NW of England. They have breeding bitterns and is the only home to bearded tits in the region.

We visited after a 1.5h drive, on a cloudy mid-September afternoon. Unfortunately too late to see the bearded tits on the grit feeders. However we did manage to see plenty of other wildlife, predominantly garden and woodland birds.

Among the many feeding stations we passed, we managed to spot hungry blue, great and long tail tits. A friendly robin sang to us for food but we had none. There were many chaffinches having squabbles, but the stars of the day (for us) was a small marsh tit and surprisingly bold nuthatches!

Marsh Tit

Nuthatch

We also saw goldcrests flittering about the trees, but they were so fast that David couldn’t get a picture! Maybe, one day!

Leighton Moss has many walking trails to choose from. David and I did them all save the salt-marshes as they were not on the main reserve. For the three hours we were there, we put in a reasonable four miles of walking.

Woodland walk

reed-bed walk

We stopped for lunch at a bench on the Causeway path, and watched as house martins swooped overhead and red and blue dragonflies darted about. Even the odd speckled wood butterfly made an appearance.

Of the many hides on the reserve I was very impressed with Lilian’s hide. It looked newly made and was very spacious, with bowed windows looking out towards the reed-beds and comfy seating. David snapped a good photo from here of a grey heron.

From Lilian’s Hide

Lilian’s Hide

Grey Heron

Not far from Lilian’s hide is the nine metres tall skytower, which gives unparalleled views over the reed-bed towards Morecambe Bay.

The path leading from Grisedale hide offered us two wildlife experiences. The first was on noticing something moving inconspicuously in the reeds, we looked a little closer to find a tiny field vole. He was so cute!

Field Vole

Further along the path we were surprised by a sudden splash of water! We did not see what made the noise but there are otters residing in the area. I’d like to think we startled one as we made our way along the path.

Overall, I enjoyed our visit to Leighton Moss. At first the £7 per person admission fee for non members seems a little steep but there is free car parking, a shop and cafe in the visitor centre, with the reserve open from dawn to dusk. So £7 for the whole day is good value for money especially as you can walk around the paths as many times as you like and rest a while in the hides.

Membership at £4 a month would be viable if we visited these places more often, but alas only every now and again do we visit an RSPB site. Perhaps that is something to be rectified in the future?

Have you visited Leighton Moss reserve? What were your impressions?

Thanks for reading,

Christine x

Sunday Sevens #12

I’ve begun compiling this week’s Sunday Sevens (devised by Threads and bobbins) early. It’s Thursday and I am eagerly dipping into my loaned library copy of Kate Rew’s Wild Swim. I am particularly interested in the section featuring lakes and tarns. I am looking for suggestions on where to do my next swim. My first being in Derwentwater on Sunday!

Wild Swim by Kate Rew

Monday saw David having a day off work. So we headed to our local park, Sefton Park to walk the family dog Riley. I think by the look on his face, Riley enjoyed himself!

This week has been National Vegetarian Week, which has been all about ‘celebrating the stories and the traditions behind the food we eat.’ David joked that it is vegetarian week in our house all of the time! Of the dishes I have made this week, this Italian flavoured Quiona and Bean Soup was healthy and surprisingly filling.

Quinoa and Bean Soup

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 1 bay leaf
• 1 can of beans, rinsed, I used Pinto, but you can use any
• 1/2 white onion, chopped
• 1/2 pepper, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped,
• 1 chilli, chopped
• 1 tbsp oregano, fresh, chopped
• 1 can of tomatoes and juice
• 500 ml of vegetable stock (I used one stock cube)
• 50g of quinoa
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Heat oil in a medium saucepan, over medium heat. Add the onions, pepper and chilli and sauté until barely tender, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the beans and garlic and stir for 2 minutes.
3. Stir in the tomatoes and their juices, and vegetable stock.
4. Add the quinoa, oregano and bay leaf. Cover and simmer until quinoa is cooked, 12 to 15 minutes.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove bay leaf and serve.

Earlier in the week mum showed me the ‘wild’ flowers that had seeded themselves in the alleyway behind our houses. Among them was a yellow poppy, which I later researched and found out was a Welsh Poppy. Also the yarden seems to be blooming, even if the weather has been grimy this week. Everything has suddenly become green and lush. The maris bard potatoes are huge and I’ve discovered that the clematis David’s mum had given us, has flowered!

Welsh Poppy

This Saturday has been a busy one! After the weekly shop, David and I headed to Harefield Water Gardens, a family run business in Widnes. We visited in a ‘monsoon!’ At least we tested out our new waterproof coats! Harefield Water Gardens have a farm shop and cafe where you can look out towards their herd of alpacas. Unfortunately they were all huddled together by their barn when we visited. We manged to purchase some pond plants and then headed towards Dobbies to get some alpines.

In the past week, we (or should I more truthfully say David), have been constructing a small pond in an area of the yarden that had once been a rockery but the plants had all died and was looking a bit sorry for itself. I suggested creating a small pond. We followed the tips on the RSPB site, used a washing up bowl and placed soil around it. We are both proud of the new instillation and hope that the plants survive and maybe one day small insects will make it their home. What do you think?

It looks like Sunday is going to be a lazy, rainy kind of day. I’m watching David play on his PS4 while planning the evenings dinner and dreaming of warmer, sunnier weather!

I hope you have a good week ahead,

Christine x