Beyond the Dark Hedges, A Meowlloween Mystery!

Last updated December 9th, 2019

The Chirpies always enjoy their tunnels in the catio especially when their humans are present. In between garden cleanup, I decided to keep some cuttings of the sunflowers, Swedish Ivy and Cosmos stalks. Why? Well, when you live and breathe cat enrichment ideas, you don’t pass up an opportunity to let your imagination run wild! A combination of olfactory enrichment, Halloween and a setting from the TV series, Game of Thrones.

The Dark Hedges is at the Chirpy Cats Tunnel

I love taking photos of the cats running through this tunnel. In fact, our Chirpy Cats Instagram account is chock-full of videos featuring it. I always thought it looked mysterious with the canopy of catnip and nasturtiums draping over. But since we did the catnip harvest it was looking rather bare. It reminded me of the Dark Hedges, a lonely looking avenue lined with beech trees located in Northern Ireland resembling a tunnel – also the set for Kings Road in Game of Thrones. But I thought our tunnel lacked the drama of the twisted branches of Dark Hedges.

So on a whim, I dressed up the tunnel to recreate the same mysterious and slightly spooky ambiance of the Dark Hedges in Northern Ireland. That morning, my garden waste wasn’t going into the compost just yet. I had lots of Sunflowers and Swedish ivy that would perk up the whiskers of a clowder of 9 cats.!

The Swedish Ivy grows lush and boisterous and has a marvelous scent! The closest I can describe it is a lemon peppery minty scent. Soon after I draped over the long stems of Swedish Ivy and Sunflower stalks, the cats just stopped and sniffed for a bit. One by one, each cat would enter the tunnel followed by another. This caused a little tunnel cat pile-up as cat traffic came to a standstill. But that was okay. They were not in a hurry to go anywhere. A little sniff-sniff here, a little licky-licky there, yes, all cat senses were firing on all cylinders!

At the entrance to the tunnel, I have a wreath made from the pruned clippings of our Actinidia Kolomikta vine, which is also a cat attractant. So the kitties are having an olfactory fest with the cacophony of scents available to them.

And I was left with a pleasant scent on my hands for the rest of the day. Lemon pepper!

The Chirpies are enjoying their “Dark Hedges” tunnel and I think I’ll keep it there until the first snowfall.

The video below features Scout as a mysterious tortie lady, part ghost cat, perhaps real too, guarding feline secrets that will remain a mystery. I will never know what lies beyond the ‘Dark Hedges”, only the Chirpies will know!

Happy Halloween from all of us at the Chirpy Cats house! We hope yours is filled with spooky-licious fun!

If you liked this post, you may want to pounce over to see how we made the scary and cute pumpkin spider toys or how to make a mini witch’s broom toy from cat-friendly twigs, grasses catnip and catvine.