Author Archives: Charles Huss

Chris the Locksmith

I mentioned in an earlier post that we have been able to keep our bedroom door shut since moving to our new place. I also mentioned that we need to lock the door to keep him from making a lot of noise by pulling the handle down and letting it flip back up. Another reason for locking it is because he has now figured out how to open it.

A few weeks ago he opened our door in the middle of the night even though it was locked. I assumed that it was not completely shut and he was able to push it open. After last night I am not so sure.

We got home late because I picked up Rose from the airport and we were both tired when we went to bed so I forgot to lock the door. So as soon as I fell asleep Chris starts flipping the door handle, causing me to get up and lock the door. About an hour later Chris is on the bed biting my nose.

I assumed he opened the door slightly while flipping the handle and I didn’t push it shut when I locked it. I picked Chris up, put him down outside the door and pushed the door completely shut and then locked it again. This time he was staying out. At least he was staying out until 4:00 a.m. when he showed up on the bed to wake me up.

How does he do it? I know it’s a simple lock and can be defeated with a toothpick but he’s barely tall enough to reach the handle. And then there’s the whole opposable thumbs thing. I guess it is just one of those mysteries that may never be solved.

We Can Now Sleep Through The Night

When One Door Opens, Look For Chris

The Wild Side of Cats

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Over a year ago I received an email stating that one of Chris’s YouTube videos (http://youtu.be/iFnHCcrlrnI) was being considered for inclusion in a National Geographic documentary titled Wild Side of Cats. I filled out the necessary paperwork but never heard back from them so I assumed (correctly) he didn’t make the cut and made a mental note to watch for the show but then forgot about it.

I don’t watch much television but by chance I noticed that it was showing the other night so I watched it. I found it to be quite interesting. The show parallels our domestic cat’s behavior to that of wild cats. One interesting example is that purring is a method of quiet communication between mother and kittens so as not to be heard by potential predators.

Another example is that wild cats will bury their unfinished kill so that other animals can’t smell it. I often see Chris do this after I feed the cats wet food. He will eat a small amount and then scratch at the floor like he is trying to bury it. I often wondered if he was saving it for later or burying it because it tasted like poop. Now I know.

Towards the end of the show they indicated that some of the affectionate things that cats do are done for non-affectionate reasons. While some of what they say may be true some of the time, I think it is wrong to try to explain away loving gestures in a cold, scientific way.

For example, they say a cat that lies on someone’s lap does it for warmth. I say that whoever produced this show probably does not have cats. Chris can be very needy at times for affection and lies on my lap quite often. I can guarantee he is not doing it for warmth. As a matter of fact, it is hot here in Florida in the summer and the cats lie on the tile floor because it is cooler. The extra warmth Chris gets from my lap is a sacrifice that he makes for attention. In addition, when Rose and I do sit down and watch television, Rose likes to sit with a pillow on her lap and Chris will often come and lie on her pillow. No warmth there but plenty of affection.

I think all warm-blooded creatures have emotions and cats have very strong emotions. They can love you just like you love them. So the next time your cat wants to lie on your lap, be assured that he or she loves you for you and not for your body temperature.

Despite my rantings, I believe the other 99 percent of the show is very interesting and worth watching. You can find more information about it at http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/episodes/wild-side-of-cats/

If you have seen the show, or even if you haven’t, let me know what you think.

The Cat’s Meow

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One of my favorite customers came to see me at work last week with a present for me. It was an electronic cat toy called “Cat’s Meow.” He said he ended up with two and since he knew I had cats thought I would have a use for it.

It took me a couple of days to get batteries but I finally got around to putting it together last weekend. It is a fairly simple concept yet it is amazing that nobody had thought of this before. The toy consists of a motor that turns an arm back and forth around a circle. At the end of the arm is a small ball and attached to that is a tail, or at least what passes as a tail. The mechanism is then covered with a round cloth so that only the tail sticks out.

I put it on the ground on the patio and as soon as I turned it on Chris and Puck both became very interested in it. I started it on fast but soon found that slow worked better. I got out my video camera and recorded them playing with it for almost ten minutes before going inside. I forgot about it an came back twenty minutes later to turn it off and saw Chris and Puck were both still there playing with the new toy.

I would give the Cat’s Meow a thumbs up for holding Chris’s attention for that long but it remains to be seen whether it can withstand the punishment of two cats. Below is a portion of the video I mentioned.

Ultimate Scratching Post… Really?

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Last weekend we were at Petco buying cat food when Rose decided the cats needed another scratching post to help encourage Chris to scratch on things other than her chair. We have plenty of approved scratching places in the house that Chris ignores but I figured it was worth a try.

We decided to get the SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post because it was tall and heavy and seemed like it might be different enough to encourage Chris to use it. It had a hefty price tag of $80 but we decided to spend the money.

I put it together and Puck scratched on it right away but not Chris. I decided to sprinkle a little catnip on it to see if that would help but most of it fell to the ground where Chris and puck fought over it while ignoring the scratching post.

It has now been in our house for six days and Puck’s orientation scratch was the first and last time I saw a cat use the so-called ultimate scratching post. To add insult to injury, I just found the same thing on Amazon for $45.

Update (September 1, 2014): This scratching post has now been in our house for over a year. After publishing this post I moved it to a higher traffic area of the house and can report that it does get more use where it is at. It does not get a lot of use but the cats use it enough to justify keeping it.

Catnip Bender

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I have a catnip plant that I have been growing for several months now. It has been outside all this time because the first time I brought it inside for the cats they didn’t seem interested in it. Yesterday I decided to try again. What a difference a few months make. I don’t know if it smells different now but the cats had their faces so deep into the plant that I thought they were going to get sucked in and disappear.

Chris was being a bit possessive of the plant and would whack Puck every now and then. When I saw how funny they were I ran to grab my camera. I wanted to also grab my video camera but the memory card was full because of my wretched procrastination. I snapped some pictures and took a short video using my Canon SLR but as always happens when shooting video with my Canon, I managed to screw up the focus. I am sure there is an auto focus setting but I have not taken the time to look for it.

After less than a minute the memory card on my Canon filled up too but I did manage to catch a bit of the action. Now I have so erasing to do.

Goodby Homer

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A few years ago I read the book Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper. It is about an amazing blind cat that saved the author from an intruder and survived the attacks on the World Trade Center.

This book, in part, inspired this blog. I read the book around the same time that we adopted Chris and I realized that books about special cats, like Homer’s Odyssey and Dewey, had great appeal to cat-loving readers. I thought about writing a book about Chris because I was certain his antics were just as interesting but getting published seemed impossible at the time.

I eventually decided to write this blog instead and last moth I published Bad Cat Chris as an eBook. I probably would not have done either if I had not read Homer’s Odyssey.

I bring this up for a reason. This morning I noticed a link to a Facebook page called Homer Blind WonderCat. I Thought to myself, “Wow, is Homer still alive?” I clicked on the link and saw a post from five minutes before thanking everyone for their support and sympathy. I scrolled down and four hours earlier was a post saying that Homer had to be put to sleep.

There is a link on the Facebook post to Gwen Cooper’s blog where she writes a very sad and touching goodby. I hope she takes comfort in knowing that adopting a cat that nobody wanted was an incredibly good deed that ultimately enriched the life of one cat and countless people, myself included.

We Can Now Sleep Through the Night… Almost

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As most of you know, one of our biggest problems with having a bad cat is that he keeps us from getting a good night’s sleep. In our last three homes, there was always some impediment that kept us from locking him out of the bedroom at night, but since we have lived in our new home, we are finally able to close the door and get some sleep.

What’s different this time? Tile floors. Yep… Sweet, glorious tile, made in Heaven and placed on our floors by divine intervention, or by a flooring contractor, I’m not sure. The point is, it is the answer to our prayers. Well, technically, I didn’t pray for tile floors, but I would have if I would have thought it would work.

I didn’t notice until I saw this picture that Chris pulled a paint chip off the bottom of the door.

Now we can close our bedroom door and Chris can’t dig a hole in the tile like he could in the carpet. Of course, nothing is ever that easy with Chris. Our door has the lever type door knob that I described in my post, The Annoyance Strategy. This allowed Chris to pull the handle down and release it, making a loud noise. He would do this over and over until someone got up and opened the door.

Last time we had to change the door knob because locking it still allowed the handle to move up and down. This time the handle will not move when it is locked so as long as we remember to lock it, sleep is almost assured.

The amount of sleep we get is still not enough but I will take almost enough over what we were getting. Chris now stands outside the door at 5 a.m. and cries and scratches at the door until someone opens it. In another post I called him “Four O’clock Chris” because that is what time he would wake us up every morning. Now it is five o’clock. I’m not sure if he has improved or if he just does not recognize daylight savings time. In any case, I just wish I was home every day so I could wake him up promptly at 3:00 p.m.

Finally, Someone to Nap With

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Chris has always been the odd cat out when it comes to napping partners. Other cats would pair up for a nap and Chris was left to join them. Usually that involved waking them up and annoying them, but they would usually accept him being there and go back to sleep.

The problem then was that nobody wanted to play with Chris. He was a gold ball of energy but had no one to help him release that energy. That changed when we got Puck, who would not only play with Chris but would actually give him a run for his money. Then Tigger died…

Puck was the player but Tigger was the only cat left that would tolerate napping with Chris, especially since Chris is not a good napper. I felt bad every time I watched Chris lie down next to a napping Puck, only to see Puck get up and move. We actually considered getting another cat that would be willing to tolerate Chris.

The good news is that lately Puck has stayed put when Chris lies next to him. I have seen them sleeping together several times lately and feel like we no longer need to consider another cat.

The problem now is that Puck spends less time with Rose then he used to. He will come to her for a greeting and then move on like he is too busy to visit. So now Rose wants a cat that will nap with her. It’s always something around here.

My Surrogate Botheries

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I hadn’t fully noticed it before but I tend to be the main point of interest when Chris is in the mood for attention. This does not include the morning ritual of bothering Rose while she puts her make-up on.

Rose worked only a few hours on Friday morning and then met her father and his wife who drove here from the east coast. Because they are over three hours away, they only make the trip here once or twice a year. We see them a few more times when we drive there but for Chris and Puck, they are virtual strangers.

Chris, as regular readers know, has no concept of stranger danger. As soon as her father came in the house, Chris was all over him. He was even on his shoulders like he found a replacement for me after only five hours. Rose told me about it on the phone and I wanted to get a picture when I got home so I could show you all but it was not to be. As soon as I got home he forgot about my father-in-law and jumped on my shoulders.

This afternoon I left for an hour and a half bike ride. While I was gone, Rose tried to get some work done for her job but Chris wouldn’t let her. He kept lying on her papers and knocking things off the desk. She would then get frustrated with him and put him down. Chris would respond to that with some curt meows and then proceed to bite her legs.

When I returned from my ride, Rose said he was in much distress after I left and then he wouldn’t stop bothering her. Again, I wanted a picture of that but by then he was no longer interested in Rose. In my absence, she was a surrogate receptor for his bad behavior.

Now that I am home and trying to write a blog post, Chris is here with me treading, biting and stepping on the keyboard. It is his way of saying, “Welcome home, I missed you.”

Are Ginger Cats Friendlier?

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I want to first thank Janet Blue from The Cat on my Head blog for honoring Bad Cat Chris with The WordPress Family Award. It is the third time Chris was honored recently and I am very happy to be part of such a wonderful family of pet bloggers.

Chris and Tigger

Today I want to talk about ginger cats. I refer to Chris, and cats like him, as gold cats but Ginger seems to be the most popular term. They are also refered to as orange, buff and probably a few others. The common belief is that ginger cats have a good temperament and are more friendly and outgoing than the average cat. Indeed, Chris is a very friendly cat and our other ginger cat, Tigger, was also very friendly.

I first heard of this belief back in 2006 when Rose and I started our short jaunt into the world of real estate. Our brokers had five or six cats which were all gold. They told us the gold cats had a friendlier personality. That was not long after we got Tigger so we assumed the theory to be correct. But is it?

I looked it up and found it to be a very common belief. A few people even commented on this blog saying that their cat looks just like Chris and behaves like him too. I did not, however, find any solid evidence to support that fur color has any impact on personality.

Black cats, for example, are thought of as being unlucky or mysterious but any black cat owner, myself included, will probably say that black cats are just like any other cat. White cats are considered to be aloof or uncaring, but again, I have seen enough white cats to know that is not true.

I believe the concept that fur color affects behavior to be a myth but there is a possible valid explanation for why ginger cats are friendlier than average. This lies in the fact that 80 percent of ginger cats are males which tend to be friendlier than female cats. Sorry ladies.

This is not always true, of course. We had a male cat, Sneakers, that was somewhat of a loner and didn’t care about other cats. He would also bite and hiss when he was done with being petted. We also had a shy but friendly female, Abbey, who was friendly to everyone but our other female cat, Princess.

Princess, however, hated all cats and only wanted attention from humans. Every cat is different and it is difficult to label them but I think, on average, males tend to get along better with other cats and because ginger cats are mostly males, this would correlate the perception that they are friendlier.

What do you think? Do you have a ginger cat that is friendlier than average?