Most people if they think of K9 Animal Refuge,  think of it as a dog shelter. With 80 dogs in their care, they are definitely that, but K9 also provide shelter for many cats in their large cattery including the fine felines shown below.

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Please call Hazel at the K9 kennels on 667 638 468 from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday to ask about the cats pictured or about the other cats.

Okay, we all know that there are cat people and there are dog people and when it comes to their favourite four legged friend never the twain shall meet. But there are those who love both – the cog or the dat people depending on which kind of furry friend was first in their household.

Much as I love dogs, I have always had cats. Even my very first feline friend gave birth to her kits in my bed when I was only three years old.

I arrived in Tenerife in 2000 from Thailand already kitted out (boom boom) with two furry friends that I brought with me. The venerable Boodle (originally Kitten Caboodle) who lived to a ripe old 22 years and Chokdi, whose name meant Lucky in Thai, but who was one of the unluckiest creatures I have ever come across.

Chokdi settling in

Chokdi and her littermates had been thrown from a three storey window on to the roof of the outside cludgie  of my Bangkok local, ‘Cheap Charlie’s’. Chokdi was perhaps the least appealing because no one had wanted her and while all the others had been spirited away by CC regulars, Chokdi was left in a cardboard box behind the bar. I took the little scrap home.

In the first week it turned out that she had in-turned eyelashes (ouch!) and a fracture in a back leg – not that it seemed to slow her down any. She got stuck behind the oven and stranded mewling at the top of the curtains on a regular basis. At first very scared and nervous, over time she became  a loud and bossy family member with a short, bright tortoiseshell coat and long legs.

Chokdi getting better (believe it or not).

When we went on holiday, the cats went into the care of a local vet. Apart from being mightily pee’d off with us for leaving her there, Boods was fine, Fergus just as fat and contented but poor Chokdi had been struck by a dreadful flesh-eating type disease.  Her beautiful soft fur was peeling off in long, raw tatters, her ears had begun to disintegrate and she was covered in gentian violet. Had we been much longer the vet would have put Chokdi down.

At home with us she recovered slowly although it took a long time  and her ears never looked right again.

Skye and Chokdi just chilling.

The two cats settled into Tenerife very quickly and neither were phased by the addition of a puppy boxer a couple of months later. Everything was great for a year or so until the night Chokdi picked up poison outside. She went into convulsion and died in pain shortly after. My poor soi baby had been through a lot in her short life but she had known love, a full belly and a warm bed which is more than many get in this life so maybe she wasn’t so unlucky after all.

Chokdi died about nine years ago so you might wonder where this trip down memory lane came from.  Well, except for the most recent addition to our family, Mia, who was given to me by a friend, every cat I have ever owned has been from a shelter or was a street stray.  Every one of them has been a wonderful family member and dearly loved friend and none have had any health problems whatsoever except for Chokdi. I just would never consider paying money for a purebred cat when there are all these fantastic waifs and strays out there just wanting someone to take them in.

The good people at K9 asked me to remind TT readers that they have a cattery which is  bursting wth great felines just  waiting for you to take them home. Please don’t miss the next post which will be all about the K9 cats….just remember not to call your new feline friend Lucky!

Well the Kid’s Parade went off very nicely yesterday although I did get into trouble for calling it a cabalgata. ‘It’s not a Cabalgata,’ my daughter informed me witheringly, ‘There are no floats!‘

In previous years the kids went dressed pretty much as they liked or possibly as they last had for Halloween which would explain the preponderance of devils, witches and mommias, but this year was different. The school chose the disfrazes and they organized getting them or making them as the case may be.

This made our Kids Parade more like the real thing where the dancing troupes called comparsas wear group costumes and pass the spectators together in a band.

First off were the traffic lights of which I have to apologise to all the other mums because my little semaforo clearly shone the brightest.

There were roving gangs of pirates, chefs in tall paper hats, American tourists in loud shirts brandishing cameras, Hawaiian dancers (who certainly seemed to be having the most fun!) and  ‘Indios de La Palma’, a nod in the direction of the immigrants who left the Canaries for the Americas and a traditional part of the Carnaval of Santa Cruz de La Palma since the ’60s.

My daughter has been teased by one of her classmates lately, who calls her ‘Ugly’. Telling her that little boys are more likely to torture the little girls that they like the best fell on deaf ears I am afraid, but guess who that is on her arm???

Ha! Change the world as much as you like but the little things will always stay the same.

I took many, many photos on Friday and in all the streets are thronged with parents, grandparents, friends and townspeople. As one local said to me,  ”This day makes us all happy. It is not only for the kids but also for the town.”

The big parade in Santa Cruz which is scheduled for Tuesday 16th February is the Carnaval event, the one that all the tourists are here in Tenerife to see; the one ’second only to Rio’. But it is far from the only Carnaval event.

Every town in Tenerife has its own Carnaval with the one in Los Cristianos which runs from 5th to 14th of March and has a Viva Mexico theme this year being the last.

Even though the Arona Carnaval is not until next month, schools are out next week and so those schools which wish to do so will be having their Kids’ Parade tomorrow.

For whatever reasons my kids’ school was a bit of a wet blanket last year with none of the outings and fun stuff the kids had got to do in the previous years. There was no Carnaval Parade, no Canarian Day celebration nor big organised march through the streets to meet the Three Kings and have a picnic in the street.

All their excursions were curtailed too. No visit to the bomberos or to the airport or day spent at the Quimpi farm or environmentally-minded expedition up the side of the Red Mountain.

Although you might think the overall recession was behind the moratorium on fun outings I have a suspicion it was more to do with the teachers lobbying for better pay and jibing at the extra duties required of them in organising and sheperding these missions when they are not paid enough for their daily grind as it is.

Anyway this year somebody put the Ooooh! back in school and we are having a Carnaval Parade. Yaaay! The kids are all aquiver and very much looking forward to their special day tomorrow.

The following information should therefore be of interest to you whether you like kids and want to watch them all march past in their Carnaval disguises or whether you loathe the little monsters and want to stay the hell out of Dodge.

If you are in the Las Galletas neighbourhood tomorrow, the kids will emerge blinking into the sunlight at approximately 12.30. Some kids will be blinking more than others, especially my son who for some mysterious reason is being dressed by his teacher as a traffic light.

My daughter and her classmates will be dressed as natives of La Palma complete with white frocks (at least the girls will be in frocks) and big floppy dress hat.  This year the school chose the outfits and ordered them from El Kilo. Saved a lot of messing about of course but in typical Tenerife fashion we only just got the blouse and skirt home now (2.p.m. on Thursday the day before the big event) to fix or fiddle with if it is too big or small.

As is traditional, all the parents will be there, stepping on each others toes and jostling for position to get the best shots of their babies. It is all in good fun but if you should be there and happen to get a belt in the ribs, well, I apologise in advacne but you really should know better than to get between a mum and her dookied-up darlings.

What a breakthrough! The collected minds of government and business have come up with two prototype beer glasses, designed to resist breaking into deadly shards should they come into contact with someone’s face.

As glassing each other down the local seems to have become something of a national sport in Britain  (around 87,000 injuries each year  in England and Wales alone), this initiative will enable everyone to continue to get bladdered and smash each other’s face in without fear of actual prosecution.

Not that there has been much fear of prosecution  in the UK lately, unless of course you are a home-owner intent on doing grievous bodily harm to the rabid gang that are in the process of murdering your family and making off with your new plasma screen t.v.

Still, that half and hour in front of the judge fairly cuts into drinking time and it gets pretty boring to keep having to come up with excuses for breaking the ASBO, so full marks to the bigwigs who dreamt this one up.

I bet it won’t be long after the introduction of these new glasses until smashing yourself in the face after downing a pint becomes a drinking game. In a race to finish your pint of Carling Black Label,  winner is the first one to glass himself.

Yikes,  the bars of Tenerife will be awash in blood unless they put up signs to tell that punters that glass is breakable.

Earlier on today, I posted about a child kidnap that was supposed to have occurred in Tenerife a day or so ago. At the time I felt sick to my stomach that a young child was in grave danger and I rushed to publish in the hope that, as the message  says below, it would help get the news out and may save the girl from being taken off the island.

Now, thanks to the intervention of Parque and DJandDeid of Tenerife Forum, I know that the information I received was false and I am just sick to the stomach that someone would think that anything of this nature was good subject matter for a hoax.

Why would anyone think this was funny? They even went to the lengths of including the picture of a littl girl, which I have since removed from the post.  I am sure I am not alone in publishing this information and feeling rather stupid right now… but what about the next time?  This stupid joke will make it much harder to get the message out when a child really is taken or goes missing

I was very silly to publish the information without checking its veracity and I apologise wholeheartedly to anyone that was unintentionally mislead and upset.

Original post:

A three year old child was kidnapped from the Taimaimo area one day ago. Elise was apparently taken by two men and a woman who were in a beige or brown SEAT Panda. Please do what you can to get the picture out there.  Please God, let this not be another Maddie or Yerami.

Alerta por el secuestro ayer de esta niña de 3 años  y medio  , Elise, en Tamaimo, Sur de Tenerife. Sus secuestradores, dos hombres y una mujer, viajan en un Seat Panda TF-7633-V (color beige o marrón).

En previsión de que puedan pasar a la península con ella, haz circular este este mensaje con la foto. Gracias…

If you have been popping into Tenerife Tattle over the last few days, you might very well have thought that I had finally blown my last gasket what with all the design and colour changes.  It has and continues to be an interesting transition from the previous theme which I felt had become too heavy to this one, which was, I felt nice and airy and flexible. Until that is, it started forcing an authentication box on all visitors.

How annoying. Anyway, just like that sweet young thing Amy Winehouse, it was time to go Back to Black which is the Suffusion theme stripped back to basics and start again.

So, if over the next days, you happen back to TT and it has changed AGAIN, it is not because I have flipped my lid.  I’m just fiddling until I get things working properly..

By the way, I know I could be doing all this faffing about in the background without letting the whole world witness my disasterous mistakes … but where is the fun in that?