That’s right, folks, the 5th Annual Tour D’ Coop is this Saturday in Raleigh (inside the beltline, of course) from 10AM-5PM. I went to the third Henside the Beltline Tour D’ Coop two years ago, but sadly had to miss last year’s. I plan on going this weekend though, come heck or high water.

Raising chickens can help you get free-range, local eggs. It cuts down on your food eco-footprint, saves you money, and gets you the freshest eggs you could ever imagine.

What is the Tour D’ Coop?

Hey, thanks for asking. It’s a tour of 20 houses with chicken coops, all inside the Raleigh beltline. If you’re interested in chickens, or just want to see some cool houses and gardens, I heartily recommend going on the tour.

When is the Tour D’ Coop?

I already said, but it’s this Saturday, May 15, from 10AM – 5PM. So be there or be square.

Where Can I Get Tickets?

You can pre-order a ticket on the !nt3r3n37, or,
early Saturday morn, getcho chicken tour tickets at one of these places:

• Steven B. Andreaus, DDS , PA
  1637 Glenwood Avenue , across from the Rialto Theater
• Ornamentea: 509 N. West Street, one block south of Peace Street
• CupAJoe: 2109-142 Avent Ferry Road, in the lower level of Mission Valley Shopping Center
• Whole Foods Market: 3540 Wade Avenue, in the Ridgewood Shopping Center
• Seaboard ACE Hardware: 802 Semart Drive, across from Logan ‘s Nursery

How much a Ticket Is?

In return for a ticket, all they ask for is non-perishable food items or monetary donations. 100% goes to Urban Ministries of Wake County.

Official Site: http://hensidethebeltline.blogspot.com/

Cats. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. These fine feline friends are great pets, but when it comes to cleaning up their god dang litter, that is certainly not the cat’s meow.

Not only is cat litter not great fun to clean up (and buy), but most clay-based kitty litter is made from clay that is strip mined from the Earth, which is horrible for the environment. The U.S. Bureau of Mines estimates that in 1994 alone, approximately 1.5 million metric tons of clay was mined to make clay cat litter.

A good way to avoid clay litter, and to reuse, is to just use old newspapers as cat litter. Here’s how to make your cat(s) some homemade newspaper cat litter.

1) Sprinkle some baking soda on to the bottom of an empty litter box. This is optional, and helps absorb some of that atrocious cat pee smell.

2) Tear newspaper into narrow strips (less than an inch wide). Pro tip: It’s a lot easier to tear vertically than horizontally.

3) Use your hand muscles to tear those newspaper strips into pieces that are about half a foot long. Use a ruler if you want to, kitty will appreciate the extra precision.

4) Make it rain. Flutter, throw, or somehow get all that newspaper into the cat litter box. It should be over halfway full (it’ll flatten a lot when it gets wet).

Et voila, you are finished. It’s recommended to change the wet newspaper daily, or else it’ll stink up your house. Hopefully your cat will give the newspaper litter the ol’ thumbs up, and you’ll be on your way to a greener kitty litter box.

Right, let’s “cut to the chase”, as “they” say. There’s a stray cat that roams our neighborhood (not Gimpy the stray cat, a different one), and me and Tiff have been feeding him/trying to adopt him for a while. So far he’s not ready to stay in our house, and since the weather is ’bout to start getting chilly, I decided it was high time to build him his very own homemade cat house from reused materials. Luckily I still had a bunch o’ materials left over from our kitchen remodeling, even after making a kitchen cart from reused materials.

First, I cut the floor and walls from some old wood I had from our kitchen remodeling. After some screws n’ glue, this is what I had:

I had some carpet left over from mi casa, so I cut out a lil’ chunk and oh-so-carefully fitted it to Charlie’s cat house.

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