I was vacuuming the other day and Chris would just not get out of the way. I tried pushing the vacuum into him to no avail. I had to stop filming and pick him up so I could finish the job.
Most cats are afraid of the vacuum but here, only Floki hides on cleaning day. How do your pets feel about the vacuum?
I just realized I did not post anything in over a week. I have my own part-time business and was supplementing my income with a part-time job. Recently that job turned into full-time and combined with the hours I spend on my business, my life has left me with little free time to do the things I enjoy, like blogging.
I will try to be better at posting in the future. While you wait to see if I live up to that, enjoy a picture of Abbey, Chris, and Tigger from April of 2010 when Chris was about eleven months old.
As a side note, another photo taken at the same time was used on my most popular greeting card on Zazzle. If you are curious, you can see it here.
I don’t have many new photos this week so I found this photo from this day in 2010.
Sav-R-Cats is a shelter in Surfside, South Carolina (near Myrtle Beach) where we adopted Chris. I started volunteering at the Humane Society there where they had something like 200 cats all separated in individual cages. We were not allowed to take out more than one cat at a time and I just felt so bad every time I went in there. My neighbor told me about Sav-R_Cats and I decided to volunteer there instead. As you can see, they had no problem letting the cats mingle with one another.
To the right of the photo are several pens that are like small rooms. The cats are put in there at night and most are let out during the day. Some of the cats, particularly the long-term residents, are never put in cages. I understand that there is a greater risk of a sick cat infecting others but potentially sick cats are isolated so the risk is small. In my opinion, it is far more important for the cat’s well-being to make them as happy as possible while they are waiting for their forever home. What do you think?
Here is a post for Throwback Thursday from June of 2015. Our old neighborhood had almost as many rabbits as people. I think our cats miss that. I see an occasional rabbit here but nothing like at our old place.
Our neighborhood is loaded with bunny rabbits (which I believe are Eastern Cottontails) but one in particular seems to hang out near our house. Granted, they all look virtually the same to me but I’m pretty sure this one rabbit is a regular. Perhaps he, or she, gets a kick out of riling up our cats.
About two weeks ago we were driving out of our neighborhood when we noticed an old couple outside with a couple of pet stairs that they labeled “free.” I stopped and mentioned that I had an older cat that might benefit from them. She said that she had them for her cat. I assumed the cat died but I didn’t pursue it.
I have been unsure about Chris’s capabilities lately. When I am sitting at my computer he scratches at my legs to get me to pick him up. He used to just jump on my lap but that ship sailed over a year ago. He also scratches at my legs or cries at me when I am sitting on the sofa, even though I know he can jump onto the sofa when I am not there.
In the bedroom, he jumps onto the footboard and then continues up from there. It is usually one fluid motion but lately, he seems to struggle to get onto the bed. He looks like someone who has slid off a cliff and is trying to pull himself back up.
I thought the stairs would be a big help so I put one in the bedroom and one in the living room next to the sofa. He didn’t use it at first and I had to put him on it a couple of times but he soon got the hang of it. I originally had it in front of my nightstand but my wife feared I would trip over it at night so she pushed the nightstand over and put it where it is now in the photo.
Having it this way does make more sense. It also means that Chris has to stop at the top and turn before getting on the bed but he quickly got the hang of that.
The stairs by the sofa are another story. Chris never used them and would either just jump onto the sofa or ask me to pick him up. I decided instead to put them next to my office chair. My hope was that he would climb the stairs to get on my lap.
So far he has never attempted to climb those stairs. He always just scratches my legs until I pick him up. They aren’t totally useless though. When I have to get up I sort of guide him to the stairs as I stand up. He then walks down the stairs and follows me, hoping this will be the time I will open the container of kibble.
I guess this is our reality now. Chris is not getting any younger or any lighter and I don’t expect that to change, although it would be helpful if I could get him to lose a few pounds.
I noticed recently that someone was peeing over the side of one of the litter boxes. I would often find pee on the floor between the blue litter box and the cabinet.
When I found pee on the floor I would clean everything extra thoroughly because I know sometimes the smell of one cat’s pee can prompt another cat to “mark” that same spot. It didn’t work. Almost every day I had to clean up pee.
It occurred to me that cats are creatures of habit. Once a habit is created, something must be done to break the habit. For example, I always make coffee in the morning and I put heavy cream in my coffee and my wife’s coffee. For some reason that I don’t remember, I started giving the cats a very small amount of that heavy cream whenever I made coffee. They soon became little vultures waiting for it and I couldn’t make coffee until they ate their breakfast or they would abandon their food in hopes of getting cream. When we went up to our home in West Virginia, it was the change I needed to break the habit. I stopped giving them the heavy cream and they never thought to beg for it because the situation was so different. When we returned to Florida I continued to not give them the cream and they all forgot about it.
This time I needed to change things enough to disrupt the routine of whoever the culprit was. I’m betting it was Frankie but I have no proof. I decided to move the blue box to the far right and shift the other two boxes over.
To my surprise, this actually worked. I have not had to clean pee off the floor in over a week.
What do you think? Does anyone else have experience breaking a pet’s bad habit?
Chris loves Frankie and will often lie next to him while Frankie is trying to nap.
I don’t know if the feeling is mutual but Frankie does tolerate Chris . . . until he doesn’t.
Here is another catnip post for Throwback Thursday. This is from June of 2015. It shows that there is no good place to hide catnip.
A few days ago I took the blender out of the cabinet and before i could close the door, Chris was in the cabinet. I knew getting him out would be difficult but I was certain I could lure him out with cat treats, so I took them out of the cabinet, that was right next to Chris, and made a big announcement that I had kitty treats. Puck and Frankie came running but Chris held his ground.
I passed out the treats to the boys, thinking Chris would not be able to resist, but when I looked back, he was gone. He didn’t leave the cabinet but made his way the five or six feet, over all our clean dishes to the other side. The cabinet above the sink has three large doors and no dividers between them. When I opened the door on the left, there he was chewing…
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Here is a picture of Frankie and Chris from this day in 2015.
I don’t know what the big secret was but I am sure it was some juicy gossip.
In other news, my part-time “second” job has turned into full time so please forgive me if I do not visit your blog as often as I used to.
Here is a post from 2015 for Throwback Thursday. I am sure everyone with cats has gone through something like this,
Cats love new things. Bring something new in the house and every cat will come out to give it a thorough inspection. That is especially true when you have to put that new thing together, as I did last night with a new shelving unit. All three of our cats were busy investigating every nook and cranny.
After it was mostly put together, they each had to get on it to test for structural deficiencies. There was even a bit of a disagreement when two of the inspectors found that their work areas overlapped.
Bad Cat Chris 