Aby Cats
Real Family Members


The Aby cats love to show their affection at dinner time. Either they sit next to your leg (or stand there on their hind legs peering over the table to check out the munchies), or position themselves on the nearest elevated surface and intently stare at your forkful, moving their head in unison with it.

But don't give in - if you give them food from the table, after they consider themselves part of the inner circle that is allowed to eat from the table. Abyssinians are very good at training their humans - and their visitors - to feed them off the table. They just take that “They never feed me, you know” –look into their faces… I swear they suck in their cheeks to look starved.

Abys also love to read. Just open a newspaper and without fail they plop on the page out of nowhere, in the middle of the very article you were reading.

I am quite certain they consider newspapers or books just as a pedestal of sorts they need to fill. Or just a way to get your attention. Well, they do get your attention for sure.

If your Aby is hiding and you want to find it (a very rare event), just put an open cardboard box somewhere. Turn your back, count to three, and when you look at the box, the cat is there. The smaller the box, the better. I think they have a cardboard box gene. Kind of a homing device.

abyssinian cat in sunspot

It is said the Aby cats life expectancy is around 12 years, but the ones I know have lived to a ripe old age . They can even live over 20 years, given good care. Of course if you allow them to go outside, there are greater risks. Even if you have an Aby that used to be an outdoor cat, they adapt easily to being indoor cats as well. You can also teach them to walk in a leash. It's easier if you start early, but we trained our adult cats to do it. A few uncomfortable days and they learned to connect the leash into getting outdoors. After they started digging out the leash out of the basket to give themselves a subtle hint a little outing was in order.


Such an active, playful, intelligent and dedicated cat - that is what the Aby cats are.

Click here to read the previous page of the article.

I Love Abyssinians

If you like this design, you will find it on my Zazzle and Cafepress stores on a variety of gifts.


This picture of Rolli the Somali cat is available for Catmas gifts in Cafepress 


Rolli wrote the cat diary page on the right after admiring the beautiful Catmas tree we brought inside. Here the baubles are yet to come, which explains the calm attitude. 


The fun began a little later, once he stated inspecting the Catmas toys on the branches.

If I was too slow to take a photo of what happened after the above photo / situation had passed, I made a drawing of it.


You will find this design in Cafepress  and Zazzle




The drawings and photos are copyrighted by the author of this site. Don't copy.


Back to Homepage from Aby Cats

Here you can read more about the Aby's looks.
Here you can read about Abyssinian cat colors.
If you want to give a home to a rescued Aby, here you find Aby Rescue Organizations.


Space Witches series

The Seven Shabtis series

The Creature Wars series
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Leena's Books

Tutankhamun

This book travels with the King Tut - Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh exhibition on his world tour of ten cities from March 2018 onwards

Tutankhamun: In My Own Hieroglyphs tells the story, for older children, of the life and afterlife of the famous young pharaoh in his own words. Tutankhamun tells us about the trouble he got into as a child in Akhenaten's palace in the new city of Akhetaten, and how he became a boy pharaoh. As we learn, his life changed a lot when he died as a teenager, and long years of boredom started in his tomb with only his pet monkey Fingers and his treasure for company. He did meet some of the Egyptian gods, of course, and had fun scaring off tomb robbers, but it was mostly rather dull. Then one day, some new and strange people, including a Mr. Howard Carter, arrived and began to take all the treasures out of his royal tomb. Fortunately, through the eyes of his beautiful golden mask, Tutankhamun, could have fun again traveling around the world

Mr Mummific

An ancient friend of mine, Mr Mummific dictated a book about how he became a mummy - and I was his scribe and artist. The book is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

On my other website www.ancientagypt101.com he continues his stories about life in ancient Egypt.

Another hilarious adventure for children with Mr Mummific, the mummy with attitude. He now tells the story of his mishaps, misunderstandings and misadventures as he leaves his tomb through the False Door to embark on the complicated and dangerous journey to the Afterlife aboard the magnificent Ship of Millions. 

Find the book at Amazon.com  and Amazon.co.uk

The Nephilim Quest Series

The first book in an epic fantasy series based on human mythology. The search for the mythical Watchers, the angels who fathered the Nephilim, the half-angels. A story that moves on three levels - our times, ancient Greece and ancient Egypt. 

Preview Nephlim Quest 1: Shadowhunter online

***

My Author Website at leenasbooks.com

Diary Of a Cat

Catmas Tree

Now one of the best times of the year is definitely Catmas. I am sure it has been invented for cats specifically. It takes into account all our hunter instincts, ability to climb and chase, the skill of making stealth attacks and vanishing acts. 


Let me explain to you what I love most about Catmas.


The Catmas tree, of course. The ultimate decorated scratching post experience.  For this I give the humans full points. A beautiful tree right in the middle of the living room is wonderful in itself for a feline explorer, but the fact that all sorts of toys are hung on the branches for us is almost too good to be true.


Mommy and Daddy used to have a real tree for a few years, and I did not quite enjoy it like I did enjoy the fake tree. The reason is obvious - the needles of the real tree pinch your paws. The fake three, on the other hand, is like a ladder - the branches spread out like there were several umbrellas on top of each other, and the green stuff is soft You just get to the lowest branch and then climb up nice and easy (and fast, if you have just been to the sand box and feel the fire in your hinies still). 


The only bad point is the decorations make tingling noises, which alarms the humans to your whereabouts, but if you have already managed to climb high enough, and are safely near the tree trunk, and under the net of lights and strings of pearls, and a layer of easily breakable decorations, the humans have great difficulty in digging you out. 


Quite often they revert to food in this case, to get the cat out of the tree, which is mission accomplished from the cat’s perspective, of course. (In time they have learned to place the yummies at the root of the tree to make the cat climb back down - or else a cat flies out of the tree like Batman, with decorations hanging around its neck in its hurry to reach the kitchen. And don’t tell me cats can’t climb down trees. They can manage a decorated scratching-post-ladder any day if the incentive is strong enough.)


In this family we have come to an agreement with our humans - usually we don’t climb up the tree as long as there are baubles hung just for us in the tree. These are placed in the lowest branches and are of plastic so they don’t break when we flip them out and play hockey with them. Of course the element of food comes into play too. If we haven’t been given enough munchies, we know how to use the Catmas tree to get the humans’ attention. 


And as an additional bonus - what could be more fun than chasing noisy baubles through the house in the middle of the night? Or climbing up the tree just a little, to make the decorations make noise? It gets the humans out of bed at respectable hours, before sunrise,. Which is when we lead them to the kitchen to feed us, which is what life is about, isn’t it?


Now I have heard of this tendency to celebrate Catmas twice a year - in the summer  too.   I totally support the idea!


I only ask you to consider the idea of making edible decorations…

- Rolli the Somali Cat

If you are looking for demanding coloring, check:

Online Coloring Books Magazine - No.1

It shows you step by step how to color this pretty Abyssinian cat with flowers. Each page has a color sample, and all the techniques are explained.