At dinnertime in our house, Chris is, surprisingly, our best behaved cat. Last night I was cooking steak and they all lined up waiting for it to be done because they know I am a sucker and will give them some.
Frankie is the worst. He will just steal a big chunk of meat off my plate and eat it with no remorse.
Puck is a little better than Frankie but Puck is all about food, always has been. That is part of the reason we named him Puck. Think Wolfgang.
Chris, and to some degree Puck, are dainty eaters when it comes to meat. They don’t like large chunks so I have to make sure they have little pieces. It is like I am feeding babies instead of full-grown carnivores.
Frankie could live in the wild and probably did. He has no trouble scarfing down big chunks of steak.
I wrote about Chris and his dominant behavior before. When Puck was alive he would sometimes hold him down by the neck. I wrote about it here. When Puck was gone he started doing the same thing to Floki. I wrote about that here.
Chris still does that to Floki occasionally but Floki is not having it. He has chosen to fight back.
Frankie sometimes likes to go far on his walks. I almost always pick him up and carry him home before we get too far away because I don’t want to have to carry him too far. Earlier this year I let him go to see how far he would walk. I did eventually encourage him to turn left after we reached the farthest point he has ever gone, but I did not pick him up or force him in that direction. Eventually, we walked a very large loop and ended up back home.
Saturday morning we went out for one of the earliest walks ever. I don’t remember the time exactly but I think it was around 6:45. It was about a half hour before sunrise.
You can see the artificial light from the street lamps.
Since it was not hot outside yet I let Frankie take me on another long walk. This time we did a large loop in the other direction. By the time the sun came up, he was ready to “stop.”
But we pressed on and made our way to one of the main streets where Frankie turned left toward home. When we got close, Frankie saw an old friend.
Frankie was interested but she ran off in the other direction. Probably because I was there.
After the first long walk, I checked Google Maps and it said we walked eight-tenths of a mile. I drew both walks on a map and found them to be similar distances.
The blue path was the first long walk and the green path was from Saturday. I looked up how far an average domestic cat travels and found one website that says a housecat will travel between a few dozen feet to a little over a half mile per day. A feral cat will travel farther. Since Frankie walked almost a mile, twice, in about forty-five minutes, I would say he is not an average housecat.
Chris is not the only lizard catcher in the family. Frankie, while not as good as Chris, did manage to snag a lizard on Saturday.
He carried the lizard around for a minute and then set him down so he could have fun catching him again. Unfortunately for Frankie, the lizard was faster the second time.
By the way, that is not blood on Frankie’s paw. It’s some kind of plant matter that he picked up with the lizard, like the leaf hanging from his mouth.
We want to wish all of our Christian readers a very happy Easter.
In case you were wondering how advanced Artificial intelligence has become, I did a little test. I asked ChatGBT to write a children’s story about three cats and then I briefly described Chris, Frankie, and Floki. Here is the story that was given to me.
Once upon a time, in a cozy little home, there lived three cats: Chris, Frankie, and Floki. They loved their comfortable life, but one day they decided it was time for an adventure.
Chris, the bold 14-year-old cat, was the leader of the group. He had always been curious about what lay beyond their home. Frankie, the 12-year-old cat, was just as brave as Chris and eager to explore the world outside. Floki, the youngest of the three, was a bit nervous, but he trusted his older brothers and was excited to join them on their journey.
One night, the three cats snuck out of their home and ventured into the unknown. They crept through gardens and alleys, their paws barely making a sound. As they walked, they saw many new things: towering trees, sparkling streams, and even other animals they had never seen before.
Chris led the way, his tail held high in confidence. Frankie followed closely behind, his eyes darting around in excitement. Floki stayed in the middle, sometimes hiding behind his brothers, but always keeping up with their pace.
Their adventure took them to many places, and they had to be clever to avoid getting caught by humans and other animals. They crawled through narrow spaces and jumped over high walls. They even snuck into a fancy restaurant and stole a piece of fish!
As the night wore on, the cats grew tired. They realized that their adventure had taken them far from their home and they weren’t sure how to get back. Floki started to panic, but Chris and Frankie kept calm and thought of a plan.
Using their keen senses, the three cats worked together to find their way home. They followed their noses and the stars in the sky. After a long journey, they finally arrived back at their cozy little home.
As they curled up in their warm beds, the three cats realized how much they had learned on their adventure. They had discovered new places, met new creatures, and tested their own limits. Most importantly, they had relied on each other and worked together to overcome any obstacle.
From that day on, the three cats continued to go on many more adventures, always staying together and exploring the world with their brave hearts and curious spirits.
What do you think? I don’t make any money blogging but I am concerned for people who make a living by writing. I think in five years the pay for writing jobs will decline because of AI. I don’t think AI will replace human writers but it will be used as a tool to make their job easier, and any job that is easy won’t pay much.
Lately, Frankie has been napping a lot on top of a crate that we keep in the cat’s room. That used to be Chris’s crate as he would spend a lot of time inside it or on top of it, but Chris now naps in his cat bed on the living room floor.
Recently, Frankie puked on the pad that was on top of the crate and I had to remove it in order to wash it. While it was in the wash, I took a cat bed that nobody uses and put it on the crate. I then noticed that Frankie had pushed the bed off the crate and was lying on top of the crate with just a towel to buffer the wires and handle connected to the top. I let him be since he was sleeping but a little while later I saw him lying on the cat bed.
My mother-in-law, Elaine, has been feeding several feral cats in her neighborhood for several years now. Currently she has about four, perhaps more, that hang out near her home. Sometimes we go there to visit and there is a cat, sometimes two, hanging out under her carport. She has even been able to coax a couple of these ferals to come inside at least part-time. Her current cat, Pumpkin, is not too keen on an outside cat coming in and sleeping on the bed, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
We went to visit recently and saw a gold cat she named Benny and I was amazed at how friendly this cat was for a feral. It’s possible he was a pet at one time but that would be unusual since the pattern seems to be feral cats in that area. Thankfully, Elaine has done a good job getting the cats…
On a recent walk, Frankie decided to climb not one but two trees.
Taking the second photo was not very smart on my part because Frankie was getting ready to ascend this tree. I stopped him just in time but if I had not I might have needed to call the fire department to get him down.
You may remember another tree climber in the family.
That was Chris during his tree-climbing days. Who else has climbers in their house?
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Frankie and I came across a snake on our walk the other day. Frankie didn’t notice it until it was slithering away. The next day, we saw another snake. This time Frankie noticed it about the same time I did. Unlike the last snake we saw, this one stood its ground. It just stared at us while we stared back at it.
It seemed like Frankie was preparing to attack so I picked him up and put him back down about twenty feet away. That was the end of that.
Bad Cat Chris 