Author Archives: Charles Huss

Up Close and Personal With The Grey Kitten

I mentioned before that there were a couple of older kittens that came around our house. One of them returned yesterday evening while my wife and I were out on the catio, without the cats.

I put my hand up against the screen and the kitten was rubbing his head on it. We talked about how bad we felt because we wanted to give him some food but we didn’t want to get him used to it because we are leaving in less than a month. Instead, I thought it wouldn’t hurt if I went outside and pet him for a while.

After a short time my wife decided to throw caution to the wind and brought out a plate of food. At first he didn’t want the food. He seemed to want attention more, but after a while he started eating.

The next door neighbor was outside at the time and I overheard my wife talking to her. According to the neighbor, the kitten, along with at least one other, are being cared for across the street from us. She also said the neighbor doesn’t want the kittens and is looking for homes for them. I wish we could take this one in because he, or she, is so cute and friendly, but we have a one cat limit in Florida and traveling with three cats is hard enough.

Goal Accomplished

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Saturday night Chris whinned and cryed and scratched at the bedroom door until finally I opened the door and let him in. He was surprisingly good. He did bother me a little but it was not untill almost 6 a.m. before he became unbearable and by then the goal of lasting an entire night in the bedroom had been accomplished.

The above photo is from 2019 but I think it illustrates how difficult Chris can be. The next photo is poor quality but it too shows what a pain Chris can be, literally.

I do not know if Chris sleeping with us will become a habit but I hope he can learn to behave himself.

Greetings From the Catio

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We went to Parkersburg yesterday morning and when we returned in the afternoon Chris was upstairs, as expected. I thought he would enjoy some catio time so I carried him downstairs, fed them first, and then opened the door to the catio. They were all happy about that.

I need to start making sure that Chris gets to enjoy quality time downstairs with everyone.

They stayed out there for three hours. I finally coaxed them inside with a can of wet food for dinner. Chris then sat between Rose and I on the sofa while we finished watching King Kong, a three hour and twenty minute movie that we started Friday.

When the movie was over I went upstairs while Rose watched a girlie show. After a short time she called me and said to come to the stairs. When I did I saw Chris on the landing. He had come up on his own. I was very happy to see that .

Chris’s New Health Challenge

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When we first brought our cats to our new West Virginia home last November, I was concerned that Chris’s age and weight would be a problem when going up and down the stairs but, to our surprise, he was the first one to investigate the upstairs. During that stay he would not hesitate to go up and down the stairs.

Fast forward to a month ago when we returned and Chris would still go up and down the stairs but he seemed to spend more time upstairs and would come down later in the day or evening when Rose and I were both downstairs. Several days ago I noticed Floki and Frankie were spending time on the catio without Chris. I started to pay attention and noticed Chris stopped coming downstairs.

I also noticed that sometimes when Chris gets off my lap, he doesn’t land gracefully like a cat but seems to stumble. I am concerned that maybe he is getting arthritis or is in pain for another reason. My concern is that he just all of a sudden stopped coming down the stairs. That tells me that something got worse pretty quickly.

I will say that since we have been back he has rarely come downstairs for breakfast. Usually he waits in the bedroom or at the top of the stairs. Since he cares about dry food more than wet food I consider it to be at least partly because of apathy.

Once downstairs I and open a can of wet food and put it on three plates. By then Frankie is on the counter eating off one of the plates before I can put it down. After I put his plate down I head up with Chris and Floki’s plates. I learned that if I put Floki’s plate down too he will eat until I leave with Chris’s food then he will follow me. So now I just take both plates and Floki follows me up the stairs, talking to me the whole way up.

The last couple of evenings I picked up Chris and carried him downstairs and then carried him back up again. On the way up I put him down on the landing and let him walk up the last three or four steps, which he seems to do okay.

I want to take him in and have him looked at but there is no vet in this town. This town of 3800 people has three auto parts stores and two hardware stores but no veterinarian. I hope this is not a reflection of the priorities of the people in this town.

He seems okay otherwise so I guess I will just carry him around for the next month and then see his vet in Florida whenwe return.

Photo Friday: Time For Dinner

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Here is Frankie at dinnertime waiting for me to put food on his plate.

I made a meme of this photo. You can see it on my blog, Just Fur Laughs.

The Return of the Egret

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For Throwback Thursday here is a memory from my favorite home.

Bad Cat Chris

When we moved into our current home almost two years ago, an egret would show up every afternoon expecting to be fed. I assumed the previous resident had fed the bird and I felt bad letting him (I will assume it is male for this writing) go hungry, but we typically don’t have meat suitable for birds lying around the house. I tried giving him cat food but that was a no-go. We did buy hot dogs for him once but we are not always home and didn’t want the bird to become dependent on us so we stopped feeding him when the dogs were gone. Soon he only came around occasionally and then not at all.

That changed the other day when he showed up at our back door looking for food. I’m not sure what changed but he apparently has a long memory.

Again we had no food for him…

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The Second Most Needy Cat in the House

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I always talk about how needy Chris is but Frankie is almost as needy. He is probably on my lap about half as much as Chris is but some of that difference is because when Chris sees Frankie on my lap he gets on my lap too and Frankie usually gets off, but not always.

What Frankie does that Chris doesn’t do is follow me around the house like a little puppy dog. Sometimes he even follows me in the bathroom.

If I close the bathroom door, he wants in even more.

The following seems to happen more often in our West Virginia home, which is significantly bigger than our Florida home. Sometimes I will go upstairs for something and then come right back down. I feel a little bad because then Frankie follows me up the stairs and then back down again. Chris is the one that needs the exercise, not Frankie.

You may recall this video I posted last January about our house. If you pay attention you can see Frankie following me around for a good portion of the inside tour. It is a 360 degree video so you need to move it around to see Frankie.

I should be clear that I’m not complaining. It is nice to be needed and Frankie is far less painful than Chris in his neediness.

Chris Almost Made It

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Sunday night, shortly after we went to bed, Chris started his usual crying and scratching at the bedroom door. This time was worse than usual and he would not stop. After about a half hour I gave up and, over the protests of my wife, let him in.

He actually did pretty well. He bothered me a little but I put him down at my side, away from my face, and he stayed there for a long time. I think he bothered me one more time but I again put him down and he again stayed.

Some time between 3 and 4 a.m. my wife got up and said she couldn’t sleep because of Chris. “He’s behaving,” I said. “How is he keeping you awake?”

“You guys are hogging the sheets and taking up the entire bed,” she said before getting up and going downstairs.

My mind went back to the time before Chris when four to five cats would sleep on the bed next to me and that didn’t cause a problem for Rose. On top of that, I’m pretty sure we had a queen bed back then instead of the king we have now.

Rose came back to bed around 4:45 and about five minutes later Chris started bothering me but this time I could not get him to stop. If it was 5 a.m. I would have considered it too late to go back to sleep and got up. That would have meant that Chris made it through an entire night in our room. Instead, I put him out and closed the door ten minutes shy of the goal.

I managed to sleep almost an additional hour before Chris started scratching and howling at the door. Some day I will get eight hours of sleep. Perhaps when we take our vacation a year from now.

Frankie’s House is Back

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When we came to West Virginia we left Chris and Floki’s Cardboard Cat Homes at our Florida home, but we brought Frankie’s house with us. He really liked lying on top of it so I thought he would enjoy it here too.

I took it apart and when we got to our home here I put it on a shelf, thinking I would put it together as soon as I finished more important things. By the time those important things were done I just forgot about it until my wife reminded me.

I put it together Sunday afternoon while the cats were lounging on the catio and then brought it out there and set it down near Frankie. He gave it a few sniffs and seemed interested for about five seconds.

That is when a stray cat decided to walk past us within inches of the screen. It was like he, or she, owned the place. Frankie immediately ran to the screen and followed while the cat walked around the catio and into the neighbor’s yard. Neither cat made a sound, which surprised me. Perhaps it was a female and the hissing and growling are reserved for males. I don’t know how that works.

In any case, we brought the cats inside shortly after that and then I brought the house into the living room where Chris and Floki took an interest in it.