Author Archives: Charles Huss

The Complicated Issue of Choosing the Right Cat Food

Since I wrote this, our cat’s diet has changed again. I now make my own raw cat food and mix it with a can of Earthborne Hollistic cat food. I still give them dry too but this time it is because Chris will not eat much of the wet food.

Bad Cat Chris

I was asked the other day what I feed our cats and I felt like I couldn’t reply without an explanation. I am currently not feeding our cats an ideal diet and I want to change that (and hopefully I will soon), but it is not as easy as it seems. I want to explain how I got to this point, what I learned, and what I may try next to improve our cats’ diet.

Rose and I have had cats since we moved in together a few months before we married in 1999. She had one cat, Sneakers, and fed him Iams dry food. Over the next several years we gained more cats and switched back and forth between several brands of dry food such as Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul, Science Diet, Max Cat, Pro Plan and then back to Iams again. All…

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Lizard in the Litter

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I was looking through my videos and came across one I forgot about from August. Puck either caught a lizard in the litter box or moved it to the litter box so he could play with it without losing it. Whatever the reason, he drew a crowd of spectators.

Photo Friday: Beyond Cute

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Sometimes I feel like our cats are married. If they are not fighting, they are sleeping together.

Chris and Floki

I Want to Come Inside Now

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This was almost three years ago but Chris is still the best hunter in the house.

Bad Cat Chris

Sunday afternoon I had some food to cook on the grill. That is always difficult because I have to go in and out the door several times and each time Chris is always at the door trying to escape. It is usually easier to just let him out and then deal with bringing him in when I’m done. I always feel bad letting Chris out because Puck and Frankie see that and then they want to go out too.

On this occasion I decided to let Puck out too but Frankie had to stay in because he’s a runner. Chris went straight to eating grass as usual and Puck walked about twenty feet and then came back. He started talking to Frankie and pawing at the screen, as if he was pleading with Frankie to let him in. Apparently he forgot where the door was. I noticed there were many…

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Floki Invades Puck’s Lair

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Puck’s favorite spot these days is on top of our china cabinet. This was a favorite spot of Chris’s a few years ago but now that he has gained weight, he can no longer jump up there. Puck can’t jump up there either but he has learned how to use me as an intermediary step. I don’t speak cat so I am not sure how to explain how I know, but when Puck wants to get on the cabinet he somehow communicates that desire to me and I bend down so he can jump on my shoulders. I then walk over to the cabinet and he jumps on top of it.

Floki sees what s going on and I think he put two and two together because on Friday morning he stood on the counter and cried at me. Again, I don’t know how I knew but I bent over and he jumped on my shoulders and I walked him over to the china cabinet where he jumped up and met Puck who was enjoying his morning in peace.

I should have not let Floki interrupt Puck’s peace but I was curios what Floki would do.
He spent a little time investigating…

until he annoyed Puck and forced him to leave.
He then settled down on Puck’s spot.

When he was ready to get down he didn’t know how. It’s an easy jump to the couch but Floki didn’t know that so he needed my help getting down and somehow I knew that too.

Since then Floki has talked me into getting up there a couple more times but I won’t put him up there with Puck now. He has also learned how to get down

I’m sure others are good at understanding their pets and I’d love to hear your story.

Photo Friday: Bed Hogs

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Here is another picture from last weekend’s cold snap. The cats spent most of the weekend keeping warm on our bed. I love this picture because Floki is sticking his tongue out as if to say “Haha, we were here first.”

Kiss a Ginger Day

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Today is Kiss a Ginger Day. It was started in 2009 as part of a Facebook group by Derek Forgie. He wanted to counter the “Kick a Ginger” day that takes place in November. It was meant for Ginger humans but why not cats too?

Here are pictures of Frankie and me from a couple of years ago. I thought I shared these already but it seems I did not. Technically, Frankie is more blonde than Ginger but let’s not split Ginger hairs. Besides, Chris is ginger so I’ll just give him a kiss today.

Did you kiss a ginger today?

Cold Weekend, Warm Bed

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We don’t get cold weather very often in the Tampa Bay area, but when we do, it’s during the weekend. Saturday morning started out at 70 degrees but dropped all day until Sunday morning when it was 36. It was cold Sunday too and currently, at 8 a.m. Monday morning, it is 41 degrees, but it will improve throughout the work week, of course.

We have an old heater and don’t trust it so we leave it off at night, which means our bed has extra blankets on it to keep us warm. That does not go unnoticed by our cats who congregated there most of the weekend.

Where do your pets go on a cold day?

Photo Friday: The Good Wash

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This picture looks like two cats sleeping together but it is actually Chris giving Floki a good washing.

Puck Takes a Dust Bath

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It’s funny that when I wrote this blog post Puck was on my desk, and now that I want to share it again Frankie is on my desk and Chris is on my lap. They don’t make blogging easy.

As proof, while I was typing the last sentence, Chris got on the desk with Frankie and then Floki joined them and walked across the keyboard. And me without my camera.

Bad Cat Chris

Lately we have noticed that Puck seems to want to roll around in the litter box.

At first we thought he was just being weird. It would be like us humans washing our hands in the toilet.

But then we discovered it is common for cats to do this. It is called a “dust bath” and naturally, this is supposed to be done in the dirt, but our inside cats have no access to dirt so this is the best they can do.

One of the reasons they do this is to cover their bodies with good bacteria that they then lick off themselves to get this good bacteria into their digestive system. They may also do this to scratch an itch or mark their territory. My worry is that the bacteria in the litter boxes may not be what I would consider good, although so far Puck seems to…

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