In The Field Day Two

Excitement was the word of the day. Maggy and Zoey visited us for a search of the elephants!



. . . great friends, great food, and . . .

. . . great fun!

Photos by Sassy

Africa Day Two

Photo by Sassy

Today, with our guide and driver, we ventured out into South Africa armed only with our cameras. We met up with some friendly lions and made friends with them, we found out that we have a lot in common.




You can all see that we have a full schedule, we had better get some rest tonight.

Settling In

Photo by Sassy

We arrived safely in South Africa at the Amakhala Game Reserve. We took most of the day finding our way through the jungle, finding the hotel, and unpacking. Tomorrow we will venture out with our guides to see if we can find a pride of lions.

On Our Way

Another day of traveling for us. We took a little catnap on the plane ride to Rome. There weren't any good moives playing, so we don't think we missed anything.



Some of our friends have asked if we fly with an Italian passport or an American one. Though we live in (and love) Italy, we are 100% red-blooded American cats. We live in Italy with a resident visa, but we are still citizens of America (like our human). For that reason, we have American passports.

We met up with Sassy and Momo at the airport, where we boarded a private jet to take us to Africa.
After a big meal and in-flight moive (The Cat in the Hat) Roscoe and Momo fell asleep. Sassy and I used the quiet time to catch up on some reading.

But it wasn't long before our eyes grew heavy and we also snuggle down for a nice cat nap.

It won't be much longer till land in Africa!

OPUS

Vacation Time

This summer our grandparents are visiting us in Italy. Unfortunately they didn't come to Italy for catnaps and would rather tour around the country, taking in the sights. Our humans thought that they could just leave us at home alone, but they should know better. Sassy has invited us to join her and Momo on a trip to Africa, complements of Ruis and Karl.

We spent the night getting our bags ready....

... and then we rested up for our big trip. Since our flying van is still missing, we were forced to take a plane to Rome.




From there, we will meet Sassy and Momo for the last leg of our trip, a plane ride to Africa. We won't be around much to visit our friends or leave comments, but we will be checking in from time to time and leaving posts about our adventures when we can.

We will come by to visit you when our humans get back and are less busy. In the meantime, we wish you all a wonderful summer and will see you again in August!

Love,
Opus and Rosoce

Home Alone

The humans are dumping us this week. They are off to Venice and have decided to leave us home. Don't they know that we KNOW Venice???? We would have made excellent tour guides.



No matter much fun they have, it will NEVER be as fun as we had there during carnival. See you guys at the end of the week.....

Remembering Emil

You are all invited to a wake for Emil. Please come by to help us celebrate the life of our friend. Gone too soon, we will remember him always with love and great fondness. Stop by "Remembering Emil" to post your favorite memory and photo of Emil or you can simply leave a comment for his family.

The wake starts today and will go on through out the weekend.

Buon Compleanno Stati Uniti

Glitter Graphics

Until We Meet Again

There are no words to express our sadness. We just hope that Karl, Ruis, Mrs. Oz, the maid and the butler know how terrible we feel that Emil has gone to the rainbow bridge. We know it is just our own selfishness, because we want to have him here with us. But he is in a wonderful place now and we know that his sister, Anastasia, is taking great care of him.

We will always remember Emil as our best friend's pesky, little brother who liked to take paparazzi photos and sneak in behind the scenes. It saddens us that we won't get to watch him grow into a proper man cat, but we find comfort in thinking that our little Emil will always be young and sweet.

We will miss you Emil and we promise to keep an eye on Karl and Mrs. Oz.

(photo by Sassy)

Until we meet again dear friend.....

High Five Sunday

Opus and Roscoe, back home again in Indiana
(photo by Zoolatry)

Concatulations Othello and Gree

We would like to send out wedding wishes to our friends Othello and Gree who are getting married in Hawaii today. We wish them all the best and many years of happiness together. Tanti auguri!

Missing Van Update

We know we haven't been on our blog for a while, sorry about that. We have been busy working the FBI, CIA, and the Sassy Hot Line in an effort to find our van. Charlotte , Scylla, Socks & MoMo might have spotted our van while they were enjoying relaxing day at The Wet Spot. They noticed an orange, VW van in the parking lot, but couldn't be sure if it was our magic, flying van as it was parked. Before any photos could be taken, and before the police arrived in the scene, the sneaky thieves got away.

Our dear friends, Karl and Ruis, stopped for a beer during their day of cycling. Little did they know, our van was just behind them...


Sassy's hot line has had a rash of van sightings all across the continental US. First the van was spotted flying over Mount Catmore.


From what we can tell, our van then headed west as several calls came in reporting our van flying over Hollywood....


...and later it was seen over San Francisco. Though it was a foggy day, callers could not mistake the orange blur in the sky as our beloved van. All of our friends in the USA, it seems the van is in the area. Please keep your eyes to the sky and let us know if you spot it.



In other news, our friends over at Jan's Funny Farm gave us the Brillante Weblog award. We would like to thank them kindly from the bottom of our hearts. They have also been instrumental in helping us find our van by reporting when our van was missing, posting our "missing van" poster and by taking a photo of our van when they spotted it over the Flint River. A big thank you to Jan and all of our friends at the Funny Farm.

If you see our van, please email us catnapsinitaly@yahoo.com, so we can post your sighting and add you to our "Sightings Link List".

MFV Sightings

Since our post about our missing magic, flying van, the calls have been flooding in.

Our first call came from KC from The Catblogosphere who had this to report:

"There wuz a reeport yesserday here in Houston yesterday that a Magical Flying Van was spotted doing a fly-by at Ellington Field (near NASA-JSC). It turned out to be an astronaut trainee (we finks)."

Next to spot our van was the crew at Jan's Funny Farm. They saw it flying over the Flint River, down in Georgia, and managed to snap a photo of it.

(photo by Jan's Funny Farm)

The next sighting was reported by Asta, in New York City, who saw our van on a barge in the Hudson River. She tried to get the thieves to stop, but they ignored her cries.

(Photo by Asta)

Things went from bad to worse as the next MFV (magic, flying, van) sighting came to us from Derby who spotted our van IN a river near is home! He thinks it might have been caught up in the flash floods brought on by recent storms in the area.

(Photos by Derby)

We have had so many van sighting come up, that we opened up a MFV Sighting hot-line. Sassy has volunteered to man the phones while we continue searching for our van.

Here are what some of her callers had to report:

One caller reported seeing the magic flying van heading down historic route 66. Anyone from Illinois on west, keep your eyes peeled for our van. It may spring up again along some of Route 66's popular historic sights.

(Photo by Sassy)

Several reports have come in from Japan with callers spotting the flying van floating over Tokyo...

(Photo by Sassy)

... over Mt. Fuji....

(Photo by Sassy)

...while a few frantic callers said that they saw the van as it barely escaped the deadly grasp of Godzilla.

Keep your eyes wide open. Our van is still out there with those dirty thieves behind the wheel. Those tricky crooks even tinted our windows to make it more difficult to identify them. Write to us, from any where in the world, should you happen to see (or photograph) our missing van.

(poster by Sassy)

Happy Anniversary!

Today our humans celebrate their third year of marriage, which is like a hundred years in cat years! Many years ago, our humans met and started a transatlantic love affair, that would end with the three of us moving to Italy for good.

The day was purfect for a wedding; clear skies filled with sunshine. They were married in one of the oldest churches in the area, complete with 13Th century frescoes adorning the alter.

(The founding of this church was around 1140 AD)

The ceremony was performed half in English and half in Italians; with booklets printed in each language so that all the guests could follow along.

(Our male Italian said his vows in English
while our female said hers in Italian)

Wedding traditions from both cultures were both used as a way to combine Italian culture with American culture; just like our family is!

(Many of the guests, including the priest,
had not ever seen a unity candle used in a wedding before)

After the ceremony, we piled into our human's car and headed off for a long night of eating, drinking, and dancing!


None of us could have imagine that we would end up in Italy all those years ago when our humans first met, but now we can't imagine living anywhere else!

(photo NOT doctored, back home with Mom at 2 in the morning)

Love brought us Italy and love has kept us here!

Our Van is Still Missing

Some of you may recall that a few weeks ago, our beloved flying van was stolen. We haven't had a lot of time to search for it with a bachelor party to plan and the wedding of the century to attend. Then we were swallowed up inside of a black hole for a few days. Now that we are home safe and sound, we can finally concentrate on finding our beloved van.

For being best men at their wedding, Karl and Ruis gave us WONDERFUL gifts. First was a VW bus/monster truck which we just loved.


If that weren't enough, they also gave us a beautiful VW limo...

... AND a customized caravan!

We are beside ourselves with these wonderful gifts and thank them from the bottom of our hearts. BUT there will always be a little piece of us missing until our magic, flying van returns home.

We are now heading up a world wide van hunt and are asking every furry friend from around the globe to help us out. We are hoping that Tigger the FBI cat can lend us a paw with the search. We are counting on each and every one of you to help get our van back home.

So far, there have been two spottings of our van. The first was by Ruis who had a MFV (magic flying van) sighting in Amsterdam. He sent us this photo...



but the van thieves got away with our van before local authorities showed up on the scene.

The next sighting was by Sukie, Livvie and Mitzi who spotted our van flying over London. They snapped a few photos, but the perps never landed and got away.

The only other piece of evidence we have to go by, is this video clip of the thieves in OUR van. Please watch the video and study their faces closely; they could be someone you know.

And last but not least, keep your eyes toward the sky and report to us ASAP if you happen to see our van flying in your corner of the world. If you should happen to get a photo of it, send the picture to catnapsinitaly@yahoo.com, so we can post it on our site.



We thank you all in advance for your help. Who knows where our van might turn up next, but with the help of friends like you we might just get it back soon!

Back from Black

Some of you might have noticed that Roscoe and I have MIA since Karl and Ruis's wedding. Just so you know, we have a purfectly good excuse for this. I had enjoyed a few too many nipatinis at the wedding reception and thought it would be best if I let my brother drive us back to Italy. BIG MISTAKE! Roscoe was having so much fun singing along with the radio that he didn't even notice when we came across a giant black hole. Well, by the time I opened my tired eyes and spotted the thing it was just too late. We were sucked in with the stars, the universe, and everything. We were in that darn black hole for the better part of a week, but at least we had a good supply of food and drinks to keep us alive; Roscoe NEVER travels without plenty of snacks. Of course this disaster lead to a lot of paw pointing. Roscoe blamed me because I couldn't drive us home safely and I blamed him for singing rather than paying attention to driving. In the end, the black hole couldn't stand our constant bickering. After five days, it spit us out and told to NEVER come back.



So we are now home, safe and sound (no thanks to Roscoe). We are going to rest up today and then resume our blogging duties tomorrow. See you then!

-Opus