Outdoor cat protection as part of a naturalistic garden paradise

Julia Konya over at Cuckoo 4 Design has transformed her backyard garden into a cat-safe outdoor environment for her three cats. Julia's design background and passion for her cats has inspired these wonderful structures that allow her cats to spend time outside while they are protected from a neighborhood threats.

Her cat-safe enclosures are constructed in various places that compliment the terrain and environment and they are connected by access tunnels that begin at one window of her home.

These kinds of structures are inexpensive to purchase, and fun to build. You can be as creative as you like by using different-colored wire mesh, and staining or painting the wood, etc. In her blog, Julia explains every detail of construction. As always you can find additional information right here as well, at catcluez.org.

$10 kitchen gadget makes treat chopping neat and easy

We feed our cats only pure meat treats - usually freeze-dried salmon, duck or turkey. We use treats for a "garnish" on our cats' regular food, to make it more interesting to them. This usually means crumbling the small crispy treats by hand which can get messy.

I thought there must be some kind of kitchen gadget that could chop the freeze-dried treats into granular bits, or even to a powder that could be sprinkled on the cats' food directly where I wouldn't need to use my fingers to crumble the treats. Doing it by hand sometimes results in some of the bits getting on the counter as well, and some treat pieces are less than completely dry, which can be a bit objectionable.

GarlicZoom to the rescue

I found this product in a local kitchen store. It's a rolling garlic chopper. Garlic cloves are put inside the receptacle which has tiny rotating blades. The receptacle is closed and the device is rolled along a hard surface. Little wheels turn gears which spin the blades and chop the garlic inside.

I tried this product with several treat products we have. One is freeze-dried salmon, the other is freeze-dried duck liver. The salmon pieces are roughly 1/4" cubes, the duck pieces vary quite a bit in size. I dropped a couple pieces into the receptacle, closed it and rolled it back and forth a couple times. The more you roll it the finer the "grind." The receptacle is colored transparent plastic so you can guage your preferred texture. When I had the consitency I wanted, I opened the receptacle and just dumped it on the cat food. Knock it against the bowl to dislodge any reluctant granules. The garlic chopper worked like a charm with both treat types.

"GarlicZoom" is made by Chef'n. It is BPA-free and top-shelf dishwasher-safe.