Our stay in Parkside broke the record for our longest ever stay – 108 days. It was also our first time as house-sitters (apart from for friends).

Our job as house-sitters was to look after two beautiful cats, water the plants, and collect occasional mail from a PO Box. One of the cats (ML) liked to be around people and demanded to be stroked on a regular basis. The other cat (MP) was not a ‘person fan’ and didn’t like to be touched – you could say that their main passion was food 🙂

In fact for MP, nothing was better than ‘cat crack’ – small tubes of paste containing ingredients that cats go wild for (it’s not officially called ‘cat crack’). As a bedtime treat in the evenings the cats liked to come onto the sofa and be fed the delicious ‘cat crack’. This was one of the only times that MP would let you stroke her.

For ML, the favourite treat was fresh kangaroo meat – which he got given once a week. We purchased this from the kangaroo butcher at Adelaide Central Market and cut it into weekly serves – putting them in the freezer ready for use.

As with many cats in Australia, the cats were indoor only cats (wild cat species are not native to Australia and so outdoor cats cause massive destruction to Australian wildlife) – so in order to facilitate their toilet trips, the house came with an ingenious addition which was called the ‘catio’. It consisted of some home made steps going up a wall to a window which had a circular cat flap cut into it. Outside of this cat flap was the catio – a fully enclosed space with a large soil area for the cats to use as a toilet. There was also a sheltered area to hide from the rain and a few pot plants dotted around. The cats were excellent at using the catio and so there was no kitty litter or cat trays required indoors.

There was also a human patio which was in general escape-proof for cats – the cats were allowed outside in this area as long as we were at home to keep an eye on them.

The house was in a very central location and during our stay we walked to Adelaide CBD many times – as well as heading off on longer walks through the Adelaide Park Lands and along the River Torrens. We also walked to the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Farmers’ Market, and to check out the Illuminate Adelaide festival one evening.

Part of our regular routine was a weekly visit to Opa Alfajores – a Uruguayan cafe located only twenty minutes walk away – with ABSOLUTELY delicious alfajores and dulce de leche media-lunas. Further afield, we made a few visits to Belair National Park and Morialta Falls Conservation Park which were both a short drive away.

It was our first full winter in South Australia and it was colder and wetter than we had anticipated! We made up for the poor weather by going on an extended quest to drink stout in various locations around the city – which led us to visit quite a lot of different Adelaide suburbs. By August the weather had improved a bit, but we carried on drinking stout anyway…

CC continued her recovery from surgery with regular trips to the nearby State Swim swimming pool, and also to a Pilates place in the CBD. Unfortunately at the follow-up appointment with the surgeon she found out that further surgery was going to be required – as a ‘defect’ had formed during the healing process.