I rarely get a picture of all four of our cats at once so when I do, I want to share.
Clockwise from left: Floki, Puck, Chris, and Frankie
Photo Friday: Bed of Cats
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Author Archives: Charles Huss
Hunker Down or Evacuate?
We are watching Hurricane Irma closely. Currently, the projected path is unclear. Some forecast models have the storm turning north and heading up the east coast of Florida. Other models have it turning north and heading up the west coast of Florida. Others have it going straight up the state. We live in Clearwater, on the west coast, and are considering our options about what we are going to do.
National Weather Service MapThe problem is we have four cats and few options on where to go. Rose considered going to stay at her sister’s vacation condo. Her condo is on the eighth floor, well above any chance of flooding. It is also high enough to be less affected by blowing debris. On the other hand, the wind blows harder at those heights and right now Irma is a category 5 storm, so even if it is downgraded, those winds will be very strong. In addition, the condo sits on a peninsula in Tampa Bay, so it is essentially surrounded by water. Worse, the parking garage is below the building so our cars won’t stand a chance.
Her other thought was to stay at her other sister’s house but where she lives isn’t much better than where we live. There’s no sense in packing up four cats to bring them somewhere just slightly better.
The other problem is, we have one large and one small cat carrier. Enough for three cats. One short. I went to Petco today and they were sold out of carriers. According to the woman there, everyone was sold out. It is like gas and water around her. There’s none to be found.
I decided to look online. I found a cheap carrier on Amazon for just over $11. I then paid almost $12 to have it shipped here by Friday. I don’t care how good it is, I just need it to work twice.
Our best option now is to stay with friends who live about six or eight miles east of us. That is a last resort. We don’t want to leave and we will ride it out if we feel safe to do so. We should know more by Friday.
My Mistake
Happy Labor Day to everybody in the U.S. I hope you are not laboring today.
I was laboring yesterday morning trying to get a post out about Chris’s vet visit and I sent it out into the world with so many mistakes that it was practically unreadable. Sorry about that.
I don’t like making excuses so we will call this a “reason” instead. Chris was on my lap and I couldn’t type. Not wanting to kick him off, I used my microphone and spoke what I wanted to say instead. Of course, that method always leads to plenty of mistakes that need to be corrected later.
What’s worse, I can’t touch type and I often type entire sentences, only to find out later that several words are missing letters. I’m not sure how that happens but it is common. I replaced my keyboard thinking that was the problem but it’s me. Even the previous sentence was missing three letters and this one was missing one letter and a space.
I was on a deadline yesterday morning because we had to leave for church soon and I wasn’t ready. I wanted to finish before we left but my wife kept calling me, telling me to get ready. I did a quick read through and thought it was okay but I must have missed whole sections because what I saw after I got home was pretty embarrassing. In retrospect, I didn’t need to publish it right away. I should have waited until I had time to properly look it over first.
Has anybody else ever published something that they were embarrassed about? Please, tell me I am not alone.
Chris Visits the Vet
Recently Chris developed a sensitive area on his back. His skin would tighten when we pet him in a certain area. At first, I thought it was like that weird nerve on a dog that causes him to lift his hind leg when you scratch his back but then it started seeming like touching that spot was causing him pain. We didn’t see anything obvious but there was a slight bump under his fur. We didn’t want to hurt him by prodding so we decided to make an appointment at the vet for Saturday.
On Saturday morning, I brought in the cat carrier and opened it up thinking that Chris would walk right in. He was about to do that but Frankie beat him to it. Once Frankie was out I was able to coax him inside by sticking my finger through one of the holes and making noises. I brought Chris outside and put him on Rose’s lap in my car and we drove the three minutes it took us to get to the vet. Chris didn’t seem to mind the trip. He can be an adventurer sometimes.
Once inside the little room at the vet’s office, I opened the cage and expected him to get out and go exploring, but he didn’t, he just stayed in the carrier. That worried me a bit because that is definitely not Chris Behavior. Normally he would be out inspecting every inch of that office.
The vet tech came in and said it would be a while because an emergency walk-in had just come in. We asked her if there were any treats and she brought back a handful wrapped in a paper towel. That did the trick. I put them down in front of Chris and he was out in an instant.
The vet tech came back and weighed Chris and looked at the spot we were talking about and said it looks like flea dirt. We asked, “What’s flea dirt?” She said another word is “flea poop.” She said fleas like to congregate in certain areas on a cat and one of them is the lower back. She got a flea brush and started brushing him and found two or three live fleas.
We then talked about treatment options and decided to just use the Activyl that we had already purchased but we’re behind schedule on applying to our cats. She asked if we still wanted to see the vet or should we just call it a tech visit? We said we didn’t need to see the vet now so she left and we tried to put Chris back in his carrier. He did not want to go back inside and made it very difficult for us. When we checked out they didn’t even charge us for the visit. They just charged us the $5 for the flea comb that we had bought that was totally unexpected and a pleasant surprise. We were expecting to spend another $200 at the vet.
Photo Friday: The Two Faces of Floki
Many of the pictures I take of Floki seem to show a cat with a very serious look on his face.
I don’t know if this is a Siamese cat trait but I know he does look pleasant in other pictures.
What do you think?
Feral Cat Update
Here is part two of my “Ferals at Work” story for Throwback Thursday. This was from July of 2015. I would spend another 11 months with these cats.
Since my last post on the subject, I have seen the feral cat that has been eating the food I put out at work two or three more times. It is strange that I put food out for a month or more without seeing who was eating it, but now I see him almost every day I am at work. I call it “him” because it sounds better than “it” but I don’t know the sex of the cat. I know there have been other cats in the area. One even looks like a skinny Chris, but they have either moved on or are much shyer than my new friend.
The last time I pulled into the driveway at work, he was nearby. It almost seemed like he was waiting for me. I quickly went inside for the cat food, put a handful in the usual place, backed away to a…
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Photo Friday: Kitty Kick Stix Burnout
Feral Cats at Work
For Throwback Thursday I want to share the story of the feral cats I was feeding at a previous job. I realize now I should not have left that job and the pleasure of seeing those cats are one of the reasons. Maybe I will continue their story next Thursday.
We have feral cats that hang out behind where I work. I don’t see them very often and when I do it is from a distance. There is a large fenced in area that has been abandoned for about a year now, although the cats have been there much longer. Because seeing the cats is rare, I thought there was no colony of cats, just a few loners who’s territories intersect near my work. If there was a colony, I thought, my work is at the outside of their territory.
About a month ago I saw a cat walking the perimeter of the fence behind my work and I thought maybe the cat has a routine. As an experiment, I brought some food to work and put a handful near the fence, on a plastic Verizon cover. By the end of the day the food was gone so I decided to continue…
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Kitty Kick Stix Review
After seeing a couple of other bloggers write about the Kitty Kick Stix, I decided I wanted to buy a couple for our cats. While I procrastinated, my wife saw them on Facebook. She liked that the company donated part of the proceeds to shelters so she ordered a two pack.
They arrived on Saturday and I decided to take a video of our cats’ reaction to them. So it will be our cats who do the review today, not me. You should also know we did not receive compensation for this post, although I am an Amazon affiliate.
So without further ado, here is the opinion of our cats, Chris, Frankie, Puck, and Floki.
What do you think? Do your cats have a Kitty Kick Stix?
How Lazy Cats Eat
Lately, it seems that I have been constantly cleaning up kibble from around the cat food bowls. I have seen our cat Floki pull it out of the bowl with his paw on occasion but I have never seen such laziness from a cat while eating like I did in the video below.
Bad Cat Chris 