Thursday, 11 September 2025

Clevedon cats - Jul 2025


We spent the month before leaving the country, house and kitty sitting for good friends. 

Lilly .... the beauty, not so much the brains 🤣
The catwalk
And Tinkerbell ... a clever and funny girl

The girls, well Tinky, have brought a skink in from the garden. We try to release as many as we can.

At the very beginning of the sit, by far the saddest thing we have experienced happened. Our cheeky chap, Alfie, got hit by a car on the main road. The vet let us bring him home for the night, but alas, he was too badly injured and his family had to made the heartbreaking 💔 decision,  the kindest decision, to put him to sleep.


Clare was with him while he passed 😔 


It took a while to find our mojo after this extremely upsetting time so we just hunkered down with the girls, all healing together ❤️ 


It was hard not to feel responsible for Alfie's accident. Even though it was just that! An accident. Cats and roads, ya know. Sigh.

Tinky definitely missed him. They arrived at their forever home together as we kittens. We met them even back then. Tinky just got clingier than her normal self and we were happy to oblige.

Lilly and Alfie never got on so she just seemed delighted not to have to put up with him bashing he and she and Tinky got a bit friendlier with each other.


We recovered by catching up with friends and family and snuggling with the girls.

Sigh.














Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Home is where the heart is - Whakatane, Jun 2025


Back in Whakatane, we were hanging with Max and Ruby while Ollie and Snow made a trip to Australia.  There had been a very special addition to the family to the family. His name is Henry. A 10 week old Springer Spaniel! How terribly terribly adorable!

Ruby isn't so sure .....
We played with our friends 

We went to puppy class and met some new friends

And we visited family for playy dates too.

Meanwhile, Max was busy taking all in his stride and being such a good big brother.


We also kept busy getting ready to leave the Bay and, in fact,  the country! Packing, repacking, practice packing, selling a tonne of stuff we had accumulated over our time in NZ, including the van.

Clare took the bus up to Auckland to start the next sit for friends, while James stayed on a few days to wind things up.

Bye Bay of Plenty. We will be back.