Author Archives: Charles Huss

Our Unobservant Cat

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For a cat, Frankie seems to miss a lot of things that you would think cats would notice. I mentioned in another post how he missed seeing a stray cat, more than once. I saw the cat and the cat saw us but Frankie was oblivious. It happened again the other day.

We walked past the house that is behind us and one over, which is a corner lot. Frankie was busy sniffing plants and didn’t notice the cat watching us from a screened patio.

There were people inside the patio so I dared not try to get a better photograph.

We continued walking for a block but a dog barking and people talking loudly caused Frankie to reverse direction. We passed the house again with the cat, still unnoticed by Frankie, then walked behind the house toward our house. The cat moved to the back door and continued to watch us. This time we were quite close but Frankie never looked left.

Frankie wasn’t ready to go home so we continued on toward the pool area. Halfway there we came upon a snake. I saw it first. Frankie saw it too but not until several seconds later when the snake decided to retreat.

In Frankie’s defense, he is not completely oblivious to the world around him. He does seem to have an uncanny ability to notice squirrels. He also caught a rabbit once after he escaped. Besides other cats, he’s not very good with reptiles. Frankie could never compete with Chris when it comes to lizard-catching ability. Chris is also the snake catcher in the family.

Frankie Asking to Go Outside

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I usually take Frankie for a walk on the weekends and he knows when it is the weekend because I am home longer that usual. Two weeks ago, my work went out of business so, until I find another job, I am home everyday. This means everyday is the weekend as far as Frankie is concerned and he won’t let me be lazy. Here he is demanding to be taken out for a walk.

Floki the Player

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Of our three cats, Floki is the biggest player. At almost seven years old he still runs around the house with toy mice and loves his turbo scratcher. He has become very good at spinning the ball around the track. The video below shows some of the skills he has in keeping the ball in motion but it is nothing compared to what I had seen when there were no cameras around.

Chris Demonstrates Dominance

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For Throwback Thursday, here is a post from late April 2016. It is Chris holding Puck by the neck. After we lost Puck he started doing that to Floki occasionally. I know some animals do this while mating but that is not what this is.

Charles Huss's avatarBad Cat Chris

I have been around cats long enough to be able to predict their behavior somewhat and not be surprised by behavior I didn’t predict. Of course, predicting behavior and understanding it are two different things and I sometimes think I will never understand why cats behave the way they do.

Chris, for example, will often straddle Puck and hold him down by the neck and then he will wash him like nothing ever happened. It seems like he’s showing his dominance but Puck never challenges Chris’s position so I don’t know why he feels compelled to do what he does. If anything, Frankie is the one that challenges Chris leadership but Chris doesn’t hold him down by the neck although he does whack him from time to time.

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I Was Attacked by Freddy Mercury

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We just can’t get rid of Chris’s ear infection so we made another appointment for him to see the vet. This time they planned on taking a sample and sending it to the lab. The idea is, the lab will grow the infection and then determine what will be most effective at killing it.

His appointment was at 9 a.m. yesterday. At about 8:30, I put his carrier on the kitchen table. Frankie and Floki were both interested.

Floki had a vet appointment several days earlier but his esp abilities had him hiding when it was time to go, so we had to cancel. I wished he had the appointment instead of Chris because how easy would this be to catch him and put him in a carrier?

This is what Chris was doing at the time.

When we got to the vet’s office, the vet tech put me in one room and took Chris into another.

While I waited I got a visit from the office cat, Freddy Mercury.

He hopped on the chair next to me.

From there he leaped at me and pushed himself off like he was trying to topple me over. He then attacked my leg.

He was obviously playing and didn’t hurt me. He hung around for a minute or two and then wandered off, probably looking for more trouble.

While I was there, I asked the vet tech if I could bring Floki in without an appointment if I could catch him. He looked at the schedule and said that would be okay. So about an hour after we got home, the opportunity presented itself, and Rose and I, working together, managed to capture the beast and get his nails trimmed.

Forgotten Video

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I get notifications from Google and Microsoft highlighting photos from this day. Today I saw this one that I didn’t remember from 2015.

I then noticed a video from the same time. I checked YouTube to see if I had posted it there. I did.

I also noticed another video from earlier that month that was still marked as a draft. It was a video of Frankie’s first time on a leash and harness. I don’t know why that video was older than the one above. Perhaps I had too much trouble with that harness so I decided to continue to let Frankie out without a leash. I did put it on upside down that time and didn’t notice until we were outside.

After these videos, Frankie proved too much of a wild spirit and would take off far beyond the backyard. Because we lived close to a main road, I had to start using a harness every time he went outside.