Pet crafts to keep the girls busy

It's been a slow week for the Almeida kids. And although I'm feeling better than I have been since my surgery, I'm still not up to climbing any mountains this week.

The girls, who are used to being busy and physically active, have been a little off-kilter with our quieter schedule these past couple of weeks and driving me a little crazy.

If they bathe the cats or give them any more attention, those cats are going to start biting and scratching their eyes out (a couple of times this past week I've had similar thoughts). Their latest antics for 'training' the cats was to teach them to sit still while being pushed around the house in the doll carriage.

I realized after this 'activity' it was time to give them a more structured project to work on so the cats could have a break from their loving attention.

Dani, a children's librarian at Baxter Library, gave us an idea for a craft project to make for the library's craft fair fundraiser in December -- pet-oriented toys and crafts.

The girls loved the idea and I thought it a perfect project to keep them busy for a couple of days.

They have had some experience sewing cat mats with their 4-H club and decided to make a modified version of the pattern they had.

G. wanted to make 'kitty beds' out of fleece and quilt batting so they were "soft and fluffy." L. wanted to make some mats like she'd seen at the pet store.

We opted to make all the mats 24" x 18" to get as many as we could from the fabric we already had at home.

G. sewed the batting for her mats right into to the fleece so that it wouldn't bunch up during repeated washings.

The fleece options readily available were diverse patterns but G. was sure there was a football fan cat owner who would like her Patriots' themed kitty bed.

Making the mats L. wanted required my help to cut and iron the border material into a long strip (like homemade bias tape) for her to pin and sew to the fleece.

And as she explained to the librarians when she brought her mats to them yesterday, she used the brown fleece for her cat mats instead of the original monkey costume she had planned to make for Halloween (another year, another crisis on deciding what to wear).

The cats were happy to walk around the house undeterred for a few hours and Dulce helped to confirm that making the mats out of fleece was a good idea.

Next week we have plans to go hiking and I hope until then this sewing project keeps them happy and gives the cats -- and mom -- a little more down-time.