Author Archives: Charles Huss

Chris the Exterminator

Even though Chris is a bad cat he has a few good qualities. Besides being the entertainer in the house, he also keeps our home relatively bug free. To be honest, Tigger deserves partial credit for that but Tigger is more of a spotter, Chris is a take action kind of cat. Weather Chris spots an invader first or Tigger, it doesn’t matter, Chris is on it like a fly on…well, lets just say he is extremely focused.

: Chris with lizzard

It is funny to watch him too because he doesn’t just catch insects, spiders, lizards or whatever other small creature enters our house, he has to play them. He keeps them alive for a while and watches them, when they try to escape, he corrals them with his paw.

More than once I saw him catch a fly and play with it like that. Somehow he knows how to disable the fly’s ability to fly away. I have even seen him play with it in one room, pick it up with his mouth and move it to another room and continue to play with it then move it to a third room before eating it. I used the term “play” but I am sure the fly didn’t see it that way.

Flies, at least, have a chance, not so with cockroaches, at least not for the ones he sees. Fortunately he doesn’t eat those or I would really be grossed out, but he does leave them as a present. That’s okay. I would rather pick up a dead roach than know there is a live one lurking around.

When One Door Opens…Look for Chris

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People that think dogs are smarter than cats haven’t met Chris. Dogs may be more trainable but that is only because they are more dependent on humans. Chris on the other hand can’t be trained but he certainly can learn, and he has amazing deductive reasoning skills.

For example, we had a storage room under the stairs in the condo. The door to the closet was a standard door with a standard round door knob. One day Chris decided he wanted to investigate what was behind that door. He worked on it for a while pulling at the bottom to no avail.

Eventually he tried reaching for the doorknob, which he could barely reach. He would grab it with both paws for a split second and then drop to the ground and pull at the bottom of the door. Then he would repeat the routine. Eventually he was able to turn the knob and unlatch the door. It didn’t pop open until he performed the second half of his plan, which was pulling it at the bottom. Once he learned this trick, we couldn’t keep him out of the closet.

We also had the accordion type closet doors upstairs. He taught himself how to open those doors too. He would lay on the floor and pull the middle out untill it popped slightly open. He then would go to the open crack and pulled on it until he could get inside.

If I was a criminal I would bring him along to help crack safes.

Bad Cat Chris Versus Spray Bottle

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Most cats hate to get wet so a handy spray bottle with water in it is a great tool for curbing bad behavior. At least that is what we thought when we bought one to keep Chris from getting on the counters.

Whenever he would jump on the kitchen counter, one of us would squirt him and he would immediately jump off. We thought after getting wet a dozen times or so he would stop jumping on the counter. Unfortunately, that idea may work with other cats but Chris seems to be immune to many of the behavior correcting techniques that you might read about.There were times when we had to squirt him three or four times within a five-minute period and still, he would come back for more. It was as if he had no long-term memory and would immediately forget what just happened. I know his memory happens to be fine though because many times he would jump off the counter when he saw one of us just pick up the bottle. I think the urge to be bad is just to overwhelming.

: Only photo I could find that shows both counter and stairs (upper right).

The problem got worse when we moved back to Florida because our kitchen counter was not only bigger but it was within jumping distance from the stairs. That meant that he could skip traveling all the way down the stairs and get off at the half way point. That worked in reverse too. He would jump on the counter and then to the stairs.

Then there was the new furniture we got shortly after moving in. Chris took a liking to Rose’s chair and started scratching it. I tried spraying it with a no-scratch spray but again, these “cures” were designed for normal cats. That left the old spray bottle as our only line of defense.

For some reason he would only scratch the chair while we were sitting in the living room. Perhaps he wanted to show us what a bad cat he could be. Sometimes he would scratch the back corner of the chair and other times he would lay on his back, dig his claws into the fabric, and pull himself around the perimeter.

Whenever he would scratch the chair we would squirt him which would end the scratching for about two minutes before it started again.

We even bought a mini spray bottle to keep in the bedroom so we could spray him when he would not let us sleep. That bottle didn’t last long.

I don’t know if it was a willful act of defiance but Chris would chew on the spray bottles. He chewed the small one so much that it was unusable a few weeks after we bought it. The larger one took more time but he kept working on it. After the small bottle stopped working we brought the big one to bed with us. I sometimes had it on the floor next to me and would grab it when Chris was being especially annoying.

When we were able to sleep, Chris was busy chewing on the nozzle. Once when I tried to use it he had turned it to the closed position. Another time he had completely unscrewed it and yet a third time he was able to unscrew the main filler cap without knocking the bottle over. I did that when I grabbed the bottle to spray him. The sprayer went with me and the water dumped onto the carpet.

Eventually he was able to chew the bottle beyond repair so we had to retire it. We never bought another one. It took awhile, but he won.

In other news, I got an email the other day from a british company named Parthenon Entertainment. They want to use a Video of Chris that I had posted on YouTube (http://youtu.be/iFnHCcrlrnI) in an upcoming documentary for National Geographic called “The Wild Side of Cats.” They are collecting more videos than they can use so he may not make it into the final cut, but if he does, that would be really great. Even if they don’t use the video, it is nice to know someone is interested.

I also want to mention that there is no change in Abbey’s condition. The vet said it is “irreversable liver damage” but I don’t have a high level of faith in today’s medical community, human or pet. Don’t get me wrong, I respect what they do but often if there is not a drug that can fix the problem, we are told the problem is unfixable.

Abbey last year

Abbey now

Inside Cat Wants Out

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Chris enjoyed a year of patio privileges while we were in Myrtle Beach but after moving back to Dunedin, that was no longer an option. Our condo did not have an enclosed patio so he was stuck inside.

Tigger and Abbey didn’t mind but Chris would often cry to be let out or he would try to race out the door when someone opened it. If he got out the front door (technically, the parking lot was the back of the building, but I consider the main door the front) he would just plop down to the ground and stretch. For Chris, it was not about exploring, it was more about celebrating the victory. Anyway, since we were on the second floor, there was not much for him to explore.

After awhile I started to let him out and I would stand there and watch him roll around. Sometimes he would investigate the area around the front door but he would stay within a few feet. Eventually he started venturing farther and farther away until he was at the stairs.

Notice how close the carport roof is to the staircase.

Once he reached the stairs he was amazingly cautious for a cat that showed no fear inside the house. When he started to get up enough courage to go down the stairs, that is when I stopped letting him out. My biggest fear was that he would get up on the roof of the carport, which was alongside the staircase, and then I would have to get up there and chase him down.

That is almost what happened one day when he unexpectedly bolted out the door as I was leaving. He ran to the stairs and took a few steps down, hesitated for a moment, then stepped through the slats and onto the carport roof. I got there just in time to reach over the railing and grab him. We were much more diligent about guarding the door after that.

I don’t have many pictures of the patio but here you can see the slats are wide enough for a cat to get through.

Our other door was a slider that led out to the patio. It was not screened like our last patio so we could not let Chris out there. This, of course, did not stop him from running out the door anyway. At first he would just roll around like he did at the front door, but then he discovered he could get through the slats to the neighbor’s patio. Before long, every time he would get out he would immediately cross over to the neighbor’s side and then roll around just out of reach. I would then have to go down my stairs and walk across to the neighbor’s side to retrieve Chris. He would then sometimes run back over to our side as if it was a game.

Our condo was just right of far left. I usually had to walk around with no shoes, which is risky because of the sand spurs.

Keep in mind that Chris is a very smart cat and would hang back, away from the door, and pretend he was not interested. He would then race out the door as soon as it was opened. He once ran across to the neighbors patio and discovered her door was cracked open. To Chris, this was an invitation to go inside, so he did.

I knew Chris had an outside cat in him and I didn’t want to suppress that so I bought a harness and leash for him so I could take him out without worrying about the trouble he could get into. This was difficult because he would not let me put the harness on him. When I finally did get it on him, the first thing he did when we got outside was lay down and kick at it with his back feet until he was able to slip out of part of it. I brought him back in and tried several times over the next few weeks.

Sometimes he would not try to get it off. He would slowly make his way down the stairs, smelling everything along the way. Each time he would go a little further until he was on the ground. I don’t know if it was because of the leash but he was not as adventurous as I thought he would be.

Other times Chris would try to get the harness off and would almost always succeed. I don’t know if I should credit Chris’s intelligence for that or my stupidity but, in either case, the harness idea didn’t work out as I hoped.

Sometimes, during the cooler months, we could leave the front door open so Chris could look out the screen, but most of the time Chris just had to enjoy the outdoors like the other cats by looking out one of the upstairs’ bedroom windows.

Believe it or not, Chris is able to cause problems by just looking out the window. Stay tuned for that story.

Bad News About Abbey

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I want to break from telling Chris’s story and mention that we took Abbey to the vet on Saturday. She has lost a lot of weight in a short time and has gone from overweight to underweight.

When we first noticed it we weren’t sure if we should be concerned that she was not fat anymore. She acted perfectly healthy. She even seemed more active than she had before. We found her on the counters more often as if she was learning bad habits from Chris. But the weight loss continued and we knew something was wrong.

It took a couple of days but when the test results came back it showed that she has liver failure and the prognosis is not good.

Abbey is a very sweet cat that never causes any problems and losing her would be hard on everyone. Tigger and her lay together all the time and she treats Chris like a mother. There are times when Chris will chase her around the house, jump on her and bite her neck and then five minutes later he will lay down next to her and Abbey will wash his ears.

I bought milk thistle yesterday because I read that it is used to treat liver disease. I don’t know if it will help but I don’t want to give up on her without trying something. If anyone has any other ideas that may help please leave a comment. Thanks.

Abbey in group hug with Chris and Tigger.

Chris disturbing Abbey’s nap.

The Continuing Saga of Poop

When Three Equals Two

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As I mentioned earlier, we had to leave Princess and Alex with people we knew in Myrtle Beach because the condo we were moving into had a two pet limit. Normally, I don’t like to lie. I feel that honesty and good character are very important traits. That is why I felt guilty telling our landlord we had two cats instead of three.

When we owned a condo in the same development, I did not feel guilty having five cats. I guess it was because we knew the rule was really there to limit the number of dogs barking and pooping in the yard. We felt that the Condo Nazis had no business knowing what went on inside our condo.

Now that we were renting, it was not really our condo and the landlord did have the right to know. He was not a bad guy and if he knew we had three cats there was a chance he would not have cared, but I was not willing to risk telling him. He was also on the condo association board so technically, he was one of the Condo Nazis.

Abbey was our ace in the hole. She was just shy enough that she would hide when strangers came in the house. The problem was that she would quickly overcome her shyness once the stranger was in the house for a relatively long time or if they were frequent visitors.

One of the first things we noticed was that the closet light in our bedroom did not work. Neither did the wall outlet next to the closet. We told the landlord about it but when he did not make it a priority to fix it, we did not push the issue because we did not want him spending too much time upstairs, where Abbey would have been hiding. I ended up replacing the outlet myself, thinking that would solve both problems, but no such luck.

He did end up coming a few times to fix other problems, all downstairs. Whenever he would come, Chris would be right there investigating what he was doing. He even came to fix the toilet while we were not home and he told us Chris was on his shoulders while he was trying to work.

Tigger would come down too while he was here but he usually stayed about half-way up the stairs and watched from a distance. It was at those times that I wished Tigger was Abbey because at least Tigger could be confused for Chris from a distance.

Usually when the landlord was here I hung around with him and kept looking for Abbey to show her face. That did happen once, maybe twice, but I was able to run upstairs and shoo her back into the bedroom. I felt like such a criminal.

He did finally come one day to investigate the electrical problem and was there for about an hour without finding a solution. By some miracle, Abbey stayed in the other bedroom the entire time.

Hopefully I won’t have bad karma for what I did. I like to think that protecting the welfare of the cats was the greater good.

Abbey, Tigger and Chris at our condo.

Bad Cat Chris Videos

Chris the Thief

The Great Upheaval

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Sixteen months after moving to Myrtle Beach, it was time to go back to Florida. Rose was asked to manage the property she left when she was an assistant manager. It was another promotion for her since the Florida property was more than double the size of the Myrtle Beach property. More importantly, we really wanted to go back to where we belonged.

Since Rose did not want to live on the property, we ended up renting a condo at the same complex that we used to own. We knew it was nice there and did not want any unpleasant surprises, since we couldn’t see the rentals first hand.

The big problem was that renting almost always means two pets. This place had a two pet rule in their bylaws. When we owned it was easier to sneak in a few extra cats, but as a renter, forget it. We decided we could get away with no more than three. That meant that two cats had to go. It was something I was not prepared to do and even tried to talk Rose into moving into one of her own apartments. At least I would have some pull with the landlord. Unfortunately, that did not work.

It was decided that Princess was an obvious choice because she didn’t like any of the other cats and absolutely despised Abbey. She would spend her days hiding under Rose’s dressing table and hiss and growl at Abbey when she came in the same room. Tony, the maintenance supervisor, took Princess for his little girls, who planned on spoiling her.

The next choice was difficult. Chris, we knew, could not be tolerated by anybody and would wind up back at the shelter so, in this case, being bad was good, for him anyway.

That left Tigger and the sister and brother, Abbey and Alex. It was not a matter of which one we cared about more, it was who we thought would be less affected by the separation. In this case, being good was bad. Alex turned out to be the better choice to stay behind because he wasn’t as needy. He also seemed to have become more of a loner as he aged. Don’t get me wrong, he was one of the friendliest cat I knew, he just was becoming less social with the other cats.

One of my last photos of Alex with Chris, of course, on top of him.

Alan, the maintenance technician, took Alex. It was nice to know our cats had someone to take care of them. I could not leave them in a cage at a shelter.

I brought Alex to Alan’s apartment a couple of days before we left and then went over a couple of times to visit him. He seemed happy there. I hated to leave him but that’s life sometimes.

I decided to plan the drive to Florida better than the drive to South Carolina. The first time we drove straight through and that was hard on the cats. This time I calculated the half-way point to be somewhere near the Florida border. I had checked hotels in Brunswick Georgia and Jacksonville Florida and found the ones near the expressway that took pets. This time we were going to leave later in the day and spend the night at a hotel.

Truck driver Rose with the cats.

On November 12, 2010, we spent all morning and part of the afternoon loading the rental truck. When that was done, we were left with the hard part, packing the cats. We had to put the cats between us on the front seat of the truck. In the large carrier, we put Tigger and Abbey because they get along well together. Chris went on top in the small carrier because we thought he would appreciate being able to look out the window.

The cats were pretty good for the most part and we made it to Jacksonville before stopping for the night. They were all happy to be out of their boxes, especially Chris, who had to investigate every nook and cranny of the hotel room.

The next day we drove the rest of the way to Dunedin. When we arrived we had two men come and help us unload the truck. That took many hours and the cats had to be shut up in the bathroom the entire time. I supposed after being in a truck all morning, it was a welcome respite.

Our new place had two levels and Chris shot up and down the stairs like an old pro. He would sometimes skip two or three stairs as he bounded down, usually hitting the ground floor and sliding into the bathroom door. Abbey, however, would come down very carefully, first the two front feet then the two rear feet, one step at a time.

Our new home with screen-less patio.

The biggest problem with our new home was that our patio was not screened nor could it be, so the cats had to stay inside. The other cats didn’t mind but poor Chris was like a bird with no wings.