cat toy: chubby the fish

recently, i found out from a good friend that her cat, milo, has been diagnosed of feline leukemia... it's so sad, especially so for my friend, who's battling with cancer herself!

even though i've not met milo, i feel as if i've known him for a long time, as we get nearly daily updates of milo's antics/condition/progress/decline etc from my friend on facebook. sometimes it's good, sometimes bad...

so i decided to make a little toy for poor milo, in the form of chubby the fish. this free pattern was sent to me by another friend, who made one for her niece. i like the colour combination she used, so i used the same colours for milo's chubby.

chubby the fish for milo...

but this is to be a cat toy, and as we all know, cats are very fussy creatures. i was worried that milo might not like his new toy, so thought of stuffing some catnips into chubby. but then another idea came to me: how about making it like those doggie toys where we stuff food into them to torture let the dogs figure out how to get the food out?

so i made a slight modification to the original pattern, whereby i added in a hallow kinda tube that extends from the tail into chubby's stomach. that way, the catnips can be replaced often with fresh ones. milo's human can even stuff kibble or some cat biscuits into it, depending on milo's preference! :)

some minor modification in the tail...

but alas, sad news... before i can finish this, i got news that milo has passed on. well, i guess i should be glad that milo's misery has finally ended :'(

anyway, this chubby will be inherited by milo's successor, a certain grey stripey kitten called "abu dhabi labu labi"! :D