Truffle is very small and skinny with long legs and big feet

She has been exploring every nook and cranny between the furniture

She loves to run

She likes cubbies and places to hide (still hides at unfamiliar noises)

She likes walking up and down the window sill

She finds the movement of blinds fascinating

She likes to play

She loves catching the feathers – she holds on and plays tug or war, pulling them away from you

Enjoying a pat (purring the whole time)

Relaxing on the window sill (still purring!)

Here’s Pixel sitting outside on the patio. We place different blankets and rugs on the outdoor furniture, which makes them new and interesting all over again to the cats. This soft red blanket was very appealing to Pixel and no sooner had Jac laid it on the chair, Pixel jumped up onto it.

Some of you may have seen this photo on Facebook. Pixel was completely absorbed in a documentary about bears that was on TV. She sat like this for ages, mesmerised.

Pixel also likes to sit in bookshelves and she likes to be close to me when I’m in the study, so Jac placed a little mat for her in my book shelf.

If I’m in the study for hours (which I usually am, working on the blog), so is Pixel. It’s nice having a little friend purring close by, happy to receive pats and kisses.

In the kitchen, Pixel tells me she wants “whatever you’re having”. In this case I was making a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich. As soon as she hears the rustle of paper when you’re unwrapping cold meats, she comes running.

Lately I’ve been finding Billy Lee asleep on her back on the floor. If I step too close she opens an eye and growl-meows a warning. But she doesn’t mind it if I rub her tummy (not for too long though!)

Billy Lee’s current favourite indoor spot is the footstool in the living room. As you can see in the photo below, she’s sitting on more blankets. :) Some days, she really doesn’t want to be photographed and gives me the unmistakable look of cat disapproval. I’m the cat owners among you know that look very well.

Billy Lee’s favourite outdoor spot at the moment is on our canvas folding chairs on the patio. On sunny weekends, it’s her favourite spot to relax. She sits there for hours.

As Billy Lee gets older, she’s getting more white specks of fur on her face, above her eye.

For comparison, see this photo below, taken in 2005:

Here’s Billy Lee on the couch, trying to sleep but cranky from being woken up by the photographer hovering near her face. This photo was taken in relatively low light using the Lumix G2’s kit lens. You can tell it was low light by the size of her pupils (as opposed to the next photo, taken outdoors)!

The rest of the Billy Lee photos in this post were taken with the Lumix 20mm f1.7 ASPH (pancake) lens. Here’s Billy Lee sitting on her favourite bench on the patio.

It looks like she was telling me to get lost, but actually, this was a yawn.

And then, a get-up-arch-the-back-and-stretch yawn. She looks like she’s imitating Benjamin, the last known Tasmanian tiger in captivity. You may notice in this photo that Billy Lee wears a pink collar with diamontes on it. I’m not a big fan of “blue for boys” and “pink for girls”, but Jac bought the collar because many people think Billy Lee is male, presumably because of her name and her large size. Jac thought a pink sparkly collar might help Billy Lee look more like a female cat. No such luck. But the most common phrase from visitors who see her remains to be: “Ooh, he’s much bigger than Pixel, isn’t he?” Of course, she is blissfully unaware and has no gender identity crises herself.

After her big stretch and yawn, Billy Lee jumped off the bench and sank to the ground where the tiles were nicely warmed from the sun.

She lay there for hours. It’s not a bad life, really.

Pixel is a lot harder to photograph than Billy Lee because she never sits still for long. Most of the time if she sees me approaching with the camera in my hand she will run away or refuse to look at me. The photos of Pixel that you see in this post were taken after much persistence from me! In the photo below, she is watching intently as Jac serves up our dinner. This photo was taken using the kit lens.

The rest of the photos of Pixel were taken using the Lumix 20mm f1.7 ASPH (pancake) lens. Once in a while Pixel enjoys sitting on the folding camp chair. In the photo below she’s looking at the camera for once, but her facial expression and ears say it all: “You are very annoying!”

She likes to jump up on the barbecue (which is covered when not in use), where she sits very still, looking like a statue.

My favourite photo of Pixel so far taken with the new camera. Twilight movie fans, when I see this picture I think Pixel is just on the verge of glistening like Edward Cullen in the sun.

My friend Charlene came over for laksa dinner a few weeks ago. Jac made curry laksa with chicken, prawns, fish cake, tofu, bean sprouts, rice noodles and egg noodles. She used Chilliz brand curry laksa paste. When Charlene and I walked in (she picked me up from work that day and drove us home), Jac was stirring the big pot of curry soup as it bubbled on the stove – the whole kitchen smelled magnificently of curry. It’s such a warm, delicious smell to come home to. Curry and roast dinners are my favourite “welcome home” smells. :)

Jac arranged chopsticks, spoons, chilli (freshly chopped and sambal) and soy sauce on a tray, all ready to go.

The chilli was mostly for Charlene (Jac had a little, I didn’t have any). I’ve mentioned before Charlene is a chilli hero – Jac and I are chilli wusses. We both like the flavour and bite that chilli adds to dishes, but neither of us can tolerate much heat. The chopped fresh chilli came from our garden – I don’t know what exact varieties they are, but one’s a big chilli and the other is very small (like cili padi).

First, Charlene added a good spoonful of chilli sambal to her soup and stirred it through.

After a few mouthfuls, she decided she needed more chilli. She added most of the chopped big chilli. “Mmm, good,” she said.

After a few more mouthfuls she added the chopped small chilli. After tasting again, she looked at us sheepishly and asked shyly, “Do you mind if I use up most of the chilli?” “No problem!” we beamed, “Use it all if you like!” As far as chilli eating goes, I shall live vicariously through Charlene! She stirred the rest of the fresh chopped chilli into her laksa. I must admit I rather enjoyed watching Charlene’s soup level get lower while its colour got more intensely red. I’d love to see her do one of the Man V Food chilli eating challenges. I reckon she’d do very well.

As we ate our dinner, the cats watched from the one of their favourite spots, the ottoman. Well – Billy Lee had set up camp on the ottoman and was most comfortable. Along came Pixel, eager to snuggle up for the warmth. She jumped onto the ottoman and practically sat on top of Billy Lee so she could fit on. Billy Lee wasn’t so keen to share and was not at all impressed by this turn of events. Immediately after I took this photo, Billy Lee decided she’d had enough, slapped Pixel with her paw and pushed her off the ottoman. Poor Pixel. Because she’s much smaller than Billy Lee, Billy Lee’s the boss.

Here’s my new desk. In the photo below, starting from the end closet to you and moving along the “L” to the other end of the desk: Gilmore Girls DVD, a tray for my daily bits and pieces like my train pass and keys, my iPod Touch (in its leather case), my black and white laser printer (not networked, sadly), router, 7-USB port hub, water bottle, another tray for pens and note paper, DVD/VCR player and TV, de Blob figurine (on top of the TV), my laptop, my second monitor (22-inch widescreen LCD), ladybug mouse and Homer Simpson mousepad, Bamboo drawing tablet (which I need to use more), clock radio with iPod dock.

On the opposite side of the room I have a matching credenza and a hutch which can fit on top of the credenza or on top of the desk. In the photo below, from left to right: a box of stationery I am yet to unpack (JetGirl may recognise the box as the one she sent me for Christmas :)), a tray for TFP-related paperwork (restaurant menus, receipts, correspondence, notes to myself for review posts etc), a tray for household paperwork (bills etc) – yep, with Pixel sitting on top, a shopping bag and the handbag I take to work each day.

Pixel has really taken a shine to my household paperwork tray. For some reason she’s not interested in the TFP paperwork tray. She’ll happily sit and watch me from “her” tray, or shut her eyes and take a nap.

We bought a large whiteboard on wheels from the Reject Shop for AU$60. It came in a box and we had to assemble it – surprisingly, we only got a little cranky with each other while doing so! :D. I write notes to myself on the whiteboard – appointment and event reminders, posts I’m working on currently, places to eat at next, random ideas I have for the blog etc. Yes – I’ve blurred out the writing on the board – sorry, I don’t want to give everything away! ;)

As soon as we got to IKEA Jac and I had to (yes, had to) stop for an IKEA $1 hot dog. These hot dogs are one of the greatest value snacks ever. You really do get a big hot dog for a dollar, and those springy, spicy wieners are delicious! As we munched on our hot dogs, we looked through the current IKEA catalogue and Juji pointed out the bookshelves she was hoping to buy.

The nasi lemak included coconut rice, a whole hard-boiled egg, peanuts, curry chicken, chilli sambal and achar (pickled vegetables). I love egg, so I was very pleased to see the whole hard-boiled egg – a lot of restaurants serve only half an egg with their nasi lemak. The rice had a pretty good “lemak” flavour too. This nasi lemak was yummy and I’d totally eat it again.

So when we got home, I laid the mats on the floor in the living room and went about my normal activities, switching on my computer, making a cup of tea, etc. When I looked back at the cats, they were sitting on the mats!

Billy took a shine to the orange mat and sat on it for a long time.

Pixel kept darting around the house like she usually does, but kept coming back to sit on the red mat for some reason.

And even after Billy Lee finally got up from the orange mat, Pixel kept coming back to the red one. She’d sit on it looking like she was thinking hard about something.

Update
A month later and Pixel still loves that red mat!

I finally finished unpacking our books! We bought more bookshelves since moving into our new house at the end of August, but I needed to get the time and energy to unpack and arrange the books. This is the theatre room, which we’ve redefined to be our library. It has its own french doors so you can close it off. Back at our old house, most of the bookshelves were in the guest room, which could be inconvenient if I wanted to read a particular book but someone was staying in the room at the time. Jac’s cook books used to be in two massive shelves in the entrance hallway. But now in the new house, they are all in the one room! The two walls on either side of the window are completely covered with bookshelves (there are bookshelves that you can’t see in the photo behind the open french doors). We put a couch in there, and as you can see, the cats think it’s a great idea! See the fan on the little table in the left corner? It was a warm day, so Jac put the fan in the library just for the cats’ comfort!

The couch is actually red, but we tend to cover it with various cloths e.g. this blue one, as thanks to the cats, it becomes fur-covered very quickly.

Sunday night, 27 December 2009
The night before Christmas breakfast with my family, Jac and I got things ready and cleaned and tidied the house. We put our new Santa Claus mat in the hallway and Billy Lee immediately sat on it. Believe it or not, this is her happy face. Heheheh.

We still haven’t found a dining set we like, so when we’re entertaining guests over a meal at our house, we use one or both of our trestle tables. For Christmas breakfast, we put the two tables together and threw a party tablecloth over them. Pixel sat at the table watching my every move and meowed at me as if to say, “So, when do we eat?”

Monday 28 December
The next morning, Juji and Jay came over early to help out. We made cups of tea and then got to work. Juji had glazed a leg of ham, which she put in the oven and kept basting.

I got to work getting the poffertjes (dutch mini pancakes) batter ready while Juji made the waffle batter (see recent post Poffertjes (dutch mini pancakes) test run).

Jac suggested we set up a cooking station out on the patio so we could keep some of the cooking heat out of the kitchen. We laid newspaper down to catch the batter drips. Juji made the waffles and I made the poffertjes.

Billy Lee watched as we cooked, of course.

We used one box of poffertjes mix and the basic waffle recipe from the booklet that came with the waffle maker.

These were the waffles made with the last of the batter.

Here’s the ham, moments before my brother sliced it. It looked just perfect – I couldn’t wait to have some.

The ham looked and smelled delicious. The sound of the knife slicing through the ham made me want some all the more. Even if I wasn’t taking photographs of the ham being sliced, I’d have stood right there, next to the ham carver and next to that wonderful ham.

I’d thought the ham looked good in the oven, all shiny and glistening, but it looked even more mouth-watering all sliced up.

My brother-in-law M fried the bacon in our electric fry pan out at the cooking station.

I left Juji to finish cooking the last batch of poffertjes and started cooking the scrambled eggs. I don’t think these were my best scrambled eggs – I may have overcooked them a little in the midst of juggling my kitchen/hosting duties.

Juji and Jay brought in the mini pancakes and waffles.

There was smoked salmon (Jac sliced up lemon wedges for the salmon too).

My sister-in-law Ange brought over a dish of her special baked stuffing, the vegetable dish in an otherwise high-protein, high-carb breakfast! Actually, we were supposed to have mushrooms and tomatoes too, but we all forgot about them! Mark and Ange had brought them along ready to cook but with everything going on forgot to take them out of the esky, and the rest of us completely forgot about them too! But it didn’t really matter, as there was PLENTY of food – we didn’t miss tomatoes or mushrooms at all!

The feast was laid out on the kitchen counter so everyone could help themselves buffet-style. Oh yes – and I haven’t mentioned yet, there were three kinds of sausages too.

This was my plate, round one.

Let me tell you, durian jam goes very well with dutch mini pancakes!

When everyone had eaten their fill, we started tidying up. Takeaway containers for whoever wanted them! I labeled the boxes so there’d be no confusion later. My brother selected items for his daughters – sausages for Ruby (they were her favourite item of the breakfast), waffle and poffertjes for Zoe, and ham and plate scraps for Honey the dog.

It turned into quite an assembly line! Luckily, I’m just like my mum and hoard plastic takeaway containers. :-P

All full from breakfast, we sat in the living room and exchanged gifts and talked and just relaxed a while. Then Mark sliced up the fruit and assembled this lovely fruit platter.

The cats had quietly disappeared as soon as everyone began to arrive. They don’t mind hanging around when we’ve got only one or two guests, but if it’s a group, they tend to hide. I found Billy Lee under Jac’s desk in our bedroom. She seemed happy enough.

Pixel was asleep, all curled up on our bed. She did peer at me briefly through sleepy eyes, but didn’t move at all.

It was time for coffee and tea and some homebaked treats. My eldest sister CW had made shortbread and gingerbread, and Ange and Ruby had made gingerbread too.

The shortbread was melt-in-the-mouth, lovely and buttery.

CW’s had made gingerbread bears, decorated by her hubby M.

Ange and Ruby made gingerbread men (or should I say people).

I love gingerbread and I didn’t hesitate to have one of each. I like to decapitate my gingerbread and munch on the heads first. First, a gingerbread bear head…

…then, a gingerbread man head. Gingerbread goes so wonderfully well with a cup of tea. I wish I had some right now!

We still have lots of unpacked boxes and junk in the garage that we need to work through and tidy up before we can actually fit the car in there. Does this scenario sound familiar to any of you guys? We also use the garage to store Jac’s gardening tools, items we’ve bought in bulk from the cash and carry (e.g. tins of baked beans and tins of corn kernels, cartons of soy milk, toilet paper etc.), our much neglected bicycles and other bits and pieces. Not surprisingly, with all this interesting stuff in there, the cats love hanging out in the garage.

Shortly after I took these photos, Billy Lee jumped up into the wheelbarrow and kicked Pixel off. Even though there’s plenty of room for the two of them in there, Billy Lee just did not want to share. And because she’s bigger, taller and twice as heavy as Pixel, Billy Lee’s the boss.