Frankie has a bit of a shoe fetish. Leave shoes lying around and there is a good chance Frankie will lie on them. Sometimes he will even fight with them, although I have never seen a clear winner.
I was going through the notifications on my phone Sunday evening and decided to click on one from google photos. I typically ignore them because they are not important but I decided to look. They had “stylized” one of my photos which was no big deal. Every day they do something with your photos. Sometimes it’s an animation, sometimes it’s an album from a certain day and place, sometimes it’s a collage from this day in history. I scrolled down and saw “Rediscover this day” from September 15, 2012. It was the day we adopted Puck.
Coincidently, we had friends over for dinner Saturday evening, one of whom was Lynn, our cat sitter. She talked about how sad she was that Puck was gone. She said Puck was her favorite and she loved how he always got on her lap and purred and purred. We all felt a bit sad after that.
Puck 2012-2018
It has been a while since I updated my profile photo so yesterday when Chris was on my shoulders I asked my wife to take a picture of us. It was impromptu and I didn’t have a chance to comb my hair or pick a nicer setting with better lighting but I thought it was good enough to use.
Our last profile photo was taken in early 2011 so it was time for a change.
I have a few other photos of Chris on my shoulders that were never used as profile pictures but are worth sharing. This one is from late 2010. It’s a little blurry which is probably why I never used it.
This is just a bad photo from 2013. Why I am sharing it, I don’t know.
Here is the earliest photo I have of Chris. It was taken with my cheap cell phone in 2009 at the animal shelter where I found him. He was on my shoulders then as always. I texted this photo to my wife, who was on a business trip, asking if we could “keep him.”
Our cat tree has a cubby with a small window. It is a place where a cat can go and get some privacy, as long as someone with a camera is not bothering them.
It seems like we have assigned seating in our house. Most every time I look, our cats are in the same place.
Naturally, with cats being cats, this will change by next week.
I will never understand why cats like lying on things that are seemingly uncomfortable. Here, Chris decided to lie on pictures that I was getting ready to hang in our new house. We are both lucky that his weight didn’t break the glass.
Last summer we won a Jackson Galaxy Comfy Clamshell Bed from The Island Cats blog (read about it here). Chris and Floki both liked it and it was used until we got a heated cat bed from Art of Paws (read about that here). Chris and Floki both liked that bed too. Since it was summer I took the heating element out and put it on the coffee table and that eventually became Floki’s bed.
At one point the Jackson Galaxy bed must have been put away because I don’t remember seeing it at the old house for the last several months. Of course, I am not very observant either. When we got to our new home, my wife found it and put it in the Florida room, which is now the cats’ room. That is where Chris and Floki rediscovered it and are now spending a lot of time together sharing the bed.
They do have other interests too. As I was writing this the bed was empty and Floki was on the Art of Paws bed while Chris was on the desk hanging out with me.
Moving to a new house did not interrupt Chris’s naughty behavior. In fact, it may have rekindled it. One of the things he used to do is pick at the bottom of closed doors. He destroyed the bathroom door in our last house and we had to replace it (read about that here). He stopped doing that at the old house but now he has started up again. I was awakened this morning by the sound of scratching at the door. I lied in bed thinking he would stop but then heard the sound of cracking wood. That wasn’t good. When I opened the door to see what happened this is what I saw.
Later that morning I heard the same familiar sound of wood splintering. This time Chris was trying to get into the hall closet.
Fortunately, we had already decided that all the interior doors needed to be replaced and I ordered six new doors just two or three days ago. There apparently was a flood in this house at one time and the bottoms of all the doors were not, shall we say, in prime condition. Some of the subfloors needed to be replaced too which we had done when we had the flooring installed.
Cabinets are another problem area with Chris. It seems he has to get into every cabinet he can find. Sometimes it takes him time to figure out which side opens.
He is most annoying standing by the pantry and crying. We kept his dry food in a very similar pantry cabinet at the other house so I think he assumes it is in this cabinet, but it is not. It is on top of the fridge. I tried to show him several times his food is not there but he is not convinced. This morning he pulled out a can of wet food. I don’t think he can smell it through the can so I assume he knows it by sight, which surprises me, especially since that was a can of Earthborn that I haven’t fed them for a week. What I have been feeding them is in the cabinet above and the cans are a different color and shape.
Hopefully, he will settle down soon. I would hate for him to destroy the new doors.
We made it through another move and we still have three cats. The bad news is that they are stuck inside without a catio.
The time leading up to the move went well for the cats. I thought they would be more stressed but they seemed to enjoy investigating all the changes.
Floki was not as bold but he was less nervous than I expected. I did feel bad for Frankie’s new favorite spot because I brought boxes to the new house during the week before the move and Frankie’s basket had to be lowered until there was nowhere to put it.
The movers were here at 8:00 a.m a week ago on Saturday. We moved most everything out of the catio and then put the cats out there while the movers emptied the house.
When they finished Rose took Floki in her car and I took Chris and Frankie in my car. I put Chris in front because his carrier was the biggest and put Frankie in the back seat.
Frankie was good but Chris was much more of a whiney baby than I expected. He cried practically the entire twenty-minute car ride. I posted a video below but Youtube rotated my video sideways with no option to rotate it back so it is what it is.
When we got to the house we had to keep them in one of the bedrooms until the movers finished and then we let them out to explore the house. Chris and Frankie were excited and explored everywhere while Floki hung out under the bed. You can see a brief glimpse of Floki at around the four-minute mark.
The new home has a Florida room with big windows that let in more sunlight than our last home, which had awnings that kept much of the sun out. As you probably know, cats love lying in the sunbeam.
Of course, it not always sunny in the Sunshine State.
My wife thought it would be a good idea to put curtains up but I thought it would ruin the view. She said they were sheer curtains and they were transparent so it would be no different than looking through the window without curtains. I said, “of course there is a difference.” If there was no difference than why are we wasting time and money putting them up? I didn’t actually say the last part.
I did open the curtains in the corner just to be a rebel.
That’s it for now. I’m sure I will have more stories to tell as we continue to unpack and settle in.
Frankie is not happy that there is no outside catio at our new house and the rainy day didn’t help his mood.
