Author Archives: Charles Huss

Another Big Move

Late in 2011 we decided to move out of our waterfront condo and live where Rose works. Part of the reason for doing that was to save about $400 a month. The other reason was for convenience. Since Rose managed the property that we were moving to, she would not have to drive to work and she could better keep an eye on the property. It also cut in half my drive to work and eventually led to me being able to ride my bicycle there. (See newlybent.wordpress.com)

It was also better for the cats. I don’t think they appreciated the waterfront view as much as we did. What they wanted, especially Chris, was to go outside. Well, that wasn’t an option, but the new place had a screened in patio that the condo did not have.

We spent weeks packing, during which time our home was basically turned upside-down. The cats knew something was going on but they have been through moves before and did not seem too stressed about it. Abbey and Tigger had been through three moves with us and who knows how many more before we adopted them. Chris had moved once with us but he was also transferred from one shelter to another before we found him. In addition, he was adopted and then returned.

When the movers came, we had to put the cats in the bathroom until they were finished. They were not happy about that. Abbey and Tigger stayed relatively quiet but Chris wanted out and was not shy about letting us know.

Our new apartment is one of the few townhomes that are on the property. It has two floors with the master bedroom upstairs and another bedroom downstairs. I had a plan to finally keep Chris out of the bedroom so we could sleep. I bought a plastic runner and cut it to fit just right under the bedroom door so he couldn’t dig up the carpet. I thought since he was not accustomed to being in the bedroom at night, he wouldn’t miss it.

That plan made perfect sense in theory but I didn’t anticipate Rose feeling bad for the cats after putting them through another move. This of course meant that we had to continue to put up with Chris in the bedroom at night. I tried using my plastic runner a few days later but since he knew what he was missing he sat outside the door crying and digging. He quickly realized he couldn’t did through the plastic so he did the next best thing, he started digging at carpet next to the plastic. I think he knows he can’t dig his way into the room; he just wants to annoy us enough to open the door.

I added the objects on the sides because he was digging next to the plastic.

Even with the brick in the way, Chris finds a way to ruin the carpet.

I thought we could put a litter box on the patio and put him out at night but Rose vetoed that idea. I think she was afraid a visitor would smell poop when they came to visit, or worse, she would smell it.

Eventually we found something that changed everything, but that is a story for another time, so I hope you keep reading.

Abbey 2004 – 2012 Rest In Peace

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We just got back from vacation today and it became clear that our cat Abbey put up a good fight but she could not beat her liver disease. You can read the rest of the story on my personal blog charleshuss.com/2012/09/13/rest-in-peace-abbey/

Chris the Exterminator

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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

The Baddest Cat You'll Ever Love