Happy Halloween!

We have had fun all week with our Halloween posts - hope you enjoyed them too. The Witching Hour is upon us - a time when the veil between worlds is thin; when witches, demons, ghouls, and other creatures walk walk among us; 

and when front porches look more like pirate ships and graveyards.

It is that magical time of year when things are not what they seem....

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can't be seen
on any other night:

Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms. 

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!

Have a spooky, fun, treat filled magical time!

Happy Halloween from all of us Cats of Wildcat Woods.

Tabitha, Vampire Kitty

The witching hour is getting closer!  It wouldn't be Halloween without a vampire or two.  Did you know there are folk tales of vampire cats?

The Japanese believed in a certain variety of shapeshifting demon that appeared as a cat. This cat often had two tails, and sometimes it could change size, growing from an ordinary house cat until it became larger than a person. It was like a vampire, in that its main purpose seemed to be sucking blood from humans and killing them. After a vampire cat had killed someone, it would be able to transform into an exact copy of that person. It would use this ability to get close to new victims, who would not suspect until it was too late to save themselves.

We will leave you today with a musical tribute to the best Dracula of all time - Bela Lugosi!




Happy Halloween - one final scary post coming tomorrow! We are joining in on Camera Critters and Photo Hunt - Dark so do go by and visit them.

Forever Friday with the Symphony Kittens

We are taking a break from our Halloween posts to do our usual Forever Friday.  Keeping  with our theme this week we are featuring  several sweet black kittens from Alley Cats and Angels near Raleigh, North Carolina. I have mentioned them before since they utilize  TNR on feral colonies and will adopt out ferals if tamed or to people with barns to provide housing for the displaced colonies.  Here is their blog story of the Symphony Kittens -

The SPCA forwarded information to us about a colony of ferals with a very limited income caregiver and our one of our TNR Task Force Leaders, Marie P, has been working for the past week trapping for TNR at that colony.  There are approximately 15-20 adult cats and about 10-12 kittens.  So far, 7 of the ferals were "fixed" through our Alter an Alley Cat program last week and we hope to get the remaining cats done this week and next week.  8 kittens have been trapped so far (6 black and white kittens and 2 all black kittens) and there are approximately 3 more kittens to catch.  The kittens are approximately 5 weeks old.  Thankfully, there was someone in the area that is willing to foster the kittens and we are ecstatic because we truly had no available foster homes for them.  Two of the household members play for the North Carolina Symphony so we have dubbed the kittens the "Symphony kittens".  No word yet as to if they will be named after famous composers (Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, etc.).
 

Aren't they sweet - didn't I tell you?  Let's help find them all forever homes - pass this on whether it be Facebook or Twitter or email!  Please do check out this great rescue organization - they have a Facebook page, blog and web site Alley Cats and Angels.

And thank for all the great comments on our Halloween week posts - we have enjoyed reading them.  We will get to you all on return visits - Mom did the posts done beforehand cuz she has been nursing Pop over some surgery this week and has been busy with that and caring for us all by herself! Come back on for more Halloween fun over the weekend.

Boo to You!

I am Al the ghost cat coming to haunt you on Halloween! Boo! Did I scare you?

Did you know that there really are ghosts cats? During the American Civil War, Tom Cat, mascot at Fort McAllister, Georgia, kept up the troops spirits by scampering along the ramparts, dodging cannon shot and musket balls. His luck ran out in March 1863 when a stray shot hit him. But to this day, staff and visitors claim to see Tom Cat's ghost running around the fort and feel an invisible cat rubbing against their legs!
(This story is from the book Cat Biz that Mom has on sale on her Wildcat Woods Vintage Treasures blog to raise money for caring for us!)

Wordless Wednesday - Trick or Treat

For more wordless shots please visit our Wordless Wednesday hosts.

Zombies

I am Sweetpea, Zombie Cat and I am coming to get you.......this is one of those accidental scary pictures Mom took of me.  But I do look like a Zombie, don't I?

Mom is a big big Zombie fan and found out that our town has started an annual Zombie walk once a year.  For some reason they missed it this year and she and Pop were very upset! It seems almost 2000 zombies showed up for the walk through downtown Asheville and the video below was taken by a Zombie about the Zombie Walk 2010!  Check it out.






If you read yesterday's post you know that in 2008 Mom and Pop dressed up as Zombies for Trick or Treating with a friend and their daughter.  Here is a picture of them with Mom's very special Kitty Litter Cake!  Does it resemble something every cat knows?  Eewwww!

The recipe for the Kitty Litter cake is very simple ( the topping is cookie crumbs and tootsie rolls. Mom added Milk Duds too) and can be found online at this site.  Mom might make it again this year...it is very tasty if you can get over the grossness!  Happy Halloween.  We will be doing spooky posts all week so stop back by!. We added this post to Anipals Photo Hunt for Trick or Treat week.  Go check it out.

Halloween Hijinks

Snowball and friends.

Happy Halloween - we will be celebrating all week long so this is just the first in a series of Halloween postings. Back in 2008, before we had this blog and after we had just moved to our home now, Mom had an exciting adventure on Halloween.  She would like to tell you all about about it ....

On Halloween morning I went about feeding the kitties and getting ready to run some errands. We were invited to go Trick or Treating with a friends and their daughter. We planned to dress up in costume and make a special cake for Halloween. Just as I was about to leave the house for a few hours I checked on us cats one last time. We had converted an old workshop/carport into a indoor/screen porch cat shelter for the white kitties. It was still a work in process.

Norm cleaning on the top shelf.

When I went out to the screened porch I noticed some of the foam board  put in the ceiling for insulation was on the floor. I looked up and several little white kitty heads peered down at me from the rafters above!!!! They had gotten up into the ceiling from the various shelf perches we made for them. It was an old workshop so I did not know whether the cats had access to the outdoors from here. Not all of the cats were up there - Al and Snowball were not good climbers so they were still in the screen porch, watching all the commotion. I knew I had to get as many back down as I could before they could escape. So much for my day running errands! Those kitties always seem to pick days I have plans to get into mischief!

Al is not our best climber and a bit of a bully.

I stood up on one of the tables and pounded hard on the ceiling making a lot of noise and succeeded in getting a couple of cats down. I finally had to make a hole in the ceiling to see who was still up there. I had taken a head count but wasn't sure. I pulled the foam board loose and saw Smidge and Lily still up above me. I sprinkled tuna and catnip on the table under one of the ceiling holes and Smidge and Lily were just about to come down when Al, my blue eyed deaf cat, went after gray tabby cat Tabitha. All the screeching and commotion scared the cats back up above! I finally put everyone else inside. 

Smidge, not sure she wants to come down.

With my walking stick I coaxed Smidge down a hole to the porch. I put her inside and tried to get Lily to come down too. No way -- she was not moving - tucked away in the far corner of the ceiling.All this had taken me a couple of hours. I still had a cake to bake and costumes to make.

I gave up for now on Lily. I left two holes open and food out. I went out for a couple of hours to run errands and finally when I came back she had come down to eat. I picked her up and put her in a kennel cage while we fixed the ceiling. We secured the smaller foam boards with tape and nailed the larger pieces back - I had made a mess of it all trying to get up there. This time it would hold so we let the cats back out.

Lily, safely down from the rafters.

We were running late but still able to make our date or so we thought.....Don and I dressed in our costumes, got the cake ready and headed for the car before realized we forgot something...the house key. We had locked ourselves out!

With the cats all watching (and probably laughing at us) from inside the house and the screen cat porch, Don removed the heavy air conditioner from the window so I could climb in, carefully blocking the open window so no cats would jump out - thank goodness we had left the A/C in this long or we would not have been able to get back inside.  I closed the window from inside and unlocked the door, taking the keys with me this time.


We made it to our date with friends - a little late, disheveled and dirty but then we went  as Zombies so that was OK! 

Hope you enjoyed Mom's funny Halloween tale - more to come each day this week - some funny, some scary and some haunting! Romeo the Cat is posting about Black cats all week so do go by!

Mom's hosting a Give-away on her other blog to celebrate 150 followers -so do stop by and visit. Go to Carolina Mountains and Give-away page.