The other day Chris was outside and caught another lizard. That is bad enough but he has this irresistible urge to bring his catch into the house and doesn’t know what to do with it when he can’t get in.
I’m not sure why he has to bring it inside. At first I thought it was instinctual but then I realized that lions don’t kill a gazelle and then drag it back to the den to eat it. Maybe he just wants to show it off to Puck and Frankie.
Yesterday morning Frankie was sleeping on the sofa and I saw Chris flop the full weight of his upper body on top of him. I knew Chris was too heavy for Frankie and this wouldn’t last long so I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped this photo.
Three seconds later, Frankie wiggled himself free and got down. Chris then went to take a nap in his cat bed and Frankie returned to the same spot on the sofa.
I was contacted by a company called Topeakmart to do a review of one of their cat trees. I missed it at the time but noticed it as I was cleaning my inbox. Normally I ignore unsolicited review requests but after checking out their website I thought their products looked appealing. In addition, we brought a couple of cat perches to our West Virginia home so I thought the cats would appreciate another one.
I was allowed to choose which product I wanted to review so I decided on the 51″ Cat Tree Condo. I could have gone with the 79″ Cat Tree Condo but I didn’t want to be greedy. Plus, I liked the 51″ tree because it had a ladder that I thought would be perfect for Chris. He is getting up there in age (and weight) and that ladder will probably be a big help in allowing him to get on it, especially in the future when he is even older and hopefully not heavier.
I should mention that I did get this cat tree for free in exchange for an honest review. They did not try to influence my review in any way but they did offer my readers a 15% discount (use code: chris15). If you choose to take advantage of the discount, I will not be compensated.
The cat tree arrived on Monday and I was surprised by how efficiently the box was packed. It was like stuffing 25 people in a phone booth.
I pulled out the instructions first to see what kind of project lay ahead of me. You may remember me writing a couple of months ago about putting a bed frame together as well as a desk for my wife. Both items were unbelievably complicated and I didn’t want another one of those. This one didn’t look too bad. I was disappointed at first that it was only illustrations and no written description but it seemed pretty straightforward.
I set up my GoPro camera and I put a clock in view to record how long the assembly process was, although it was difficult to see the clock in the final video. I set the video for two frames per second and got to work. As you can see, it went pretty well but I was delayed a bit by Frankie who had to get inside one of the pieces I was assembling. I also separated the screws at the beginning but still managed to get them mixed up and used the wrong screw on two separate occasions. I also screwed one of the posts into the wrong hole but that was because I jumped ahead without reading the directions.
It took me about 40 minutes to assemble the cat tree. I probably wasted about ten minutes with my careless mistakes and with stopping to deal with Frankie or take pictures. I estimate that a normal person without distractions could put it together in 30 minutes or less. If you have already seen it done, like in the video, perhaps twenty minutes is reasonable.
Frankie was the first to investigate the cat tree. As soon as I started putting it together he had to check it out.
Floki was next.
Frankie was also first to get on it when it was finished.
He seemed to like the cubby and ended up taking a nap there.
Later, Frankie checked out the upper part of the cat tree.
I’m not sure why but the cats seemed to think that this is a one at a time cat tree. As soon as Frankie got down Floki got up on it.
He had to check out every nook and cranny to make sure it met with his approval.
Chris was sleeping in his cat bed when I finished but as soon as he woke up he had to check it out too. I was in the kitchen making dinner so I did not see Chris take over the tree from Floki but I hope it was a peaceful transfer.
I left and came back a little later and Chris had moved to the bottom.
It seems a waste of a good cat tree to hang out at the very bottom but perhaps he was just enjoying the velvety softness of the carpet. It is amazingly soft compared to the carpet on our other cat tree.
So far they have not yet discovered the hammock that hangs near the bottom or the toy that hangs from the top perch but that just means more surprises for them in the future.
Overall I think this is a great cat tree that is well made and a practical design. It has one downside that I can see. The upper two posts are adequate for an average-sized cat but maybe not for a heavy cat like Chris. Of course, Chris would probably not attempt to jump up there, so I don’t see it as an issue. They have a blog post on their website called “4 Best Cat Trees for Large Cats in 2021 from Topeakmart” which I probably should have read before choosing a cat tree, but I think the one I picked is still a good choice for our cats.
Tell me you think? Would your cat’s enjoy a cat tree like this?
We have had a Turbo Scratcher for years and it has gone through many cats. It is one of the best cat toys we have ever had and most recently it was one of Floki’s two favorite toys, the other being the three-way cat tunnel. We brought both toys with us to West Virginia but came back with only the tunnel. There wasn’t much room in the car but I probably could have squeezed the Turbo Scratcher in with us but I just didn’t think about it.
The other day my wife reminded me that I needed to order another one so I looked on Amazon and found this one (affiliate link). It arived Saturday and as soon as I took it out of the package Chris was interested in it. Of course, it may be because I added a little of the included catnip.
Floki finally did get to play with his toy after Chris was done hogging it. By then Chris was more interested in the box that it came in.
That of course got Floki interested too.
Victory at last. Now things can get back to normal.
Here is another photo from our time in West Virginia. Frankie spent a lot of time lying on the heat grate and here Chris has joined him.
I like this photo even though the technical quality is not good. There is a slight blue cast and Frankie seems to have lost his color. Also, notice the paw prints in the foreground. Someone either got their feet wet before getting in the litterbox or they stepped in their own pee before burying it. There was a trail leading from upstairs all the way through the house downstairs.
Before we came back to Florida I took a 360-degree video of our home in West Virginia so you could get an idea of what it was like for Rose and I and the cats. I took it using my GoPro Fusion camera that has two 180 degree lenses. It is essentially two cameras in one with a software program called Fusion Studio that stitches the two images together.
Unfortunately, Fusion Studio is the worst software program since Windows Vista and possibly even worse than that. Both the camera and the program were discontinued shortly after I bought the camera so there is no hope for an update that will improve it.
In any case, it would not work on my computer in West Virginia so I had to wait until I got back to Florida to process it. When it did process the video, it tried to keep the video pointing in the same direction even though I turned the camera. So watching it will require you to use your mouse or finger to turn the image so you can see everything. Better yet, if you have VR goggles you can use that.
A couple of things I didn’t mention in the video are that the home is on the National Registry of Historic Places, and two people told us there is a ghost in the house. One said the ghost is a woman wearing clothing that would have been worn at the turn of the Twentieth Century. He claims to have personally see her, multiple times, in or near the gossip room. Another says the ghost is male and can sometimes be seen in the upstairs window smoking a pipe. I have not seen or heard any ghost but I think it would be fun to partake in a city-wide ghost tour which I heard they have done in the past.
As you can see the cats had plenty of space to run around or just hide if they wanted personal space. Even so, I think they are happy here in our Florida home too. Our next task is to find a larger vehicle so we can transport them more comfortably. But that is something I won’t have to worry about until the summer.
What do you think? Were you able to see the video okay?
The second leg of our trip back from West Virginia went pretty well except Floki cried almost the entire drive home. He would stop for brief respites and then start again. I half expected Chris to smack him and meow at him to be quiet.
We got home at about 1:00 in the afternoon. When we reached Tampa and were about a half hour from home we started joking about how surprised the cats were going to be when we put them in their old home.
30 seconds to home.
I never researched how good a cat’s memory is. I always imagined it to be similar to a human’s memory. I’d like to think that if I brought Chris back to the home we lived in when we adopted him more than eleven years ago he would remember it, or at least find it familiar.
I brought both crates inside and then opened the door. They were all so happy to be free and I could only imagine what they were thinking. What they did not do was go exploring. A new place requires exploring but this one was already known to them.
When we left for West Virginia I cleaned our three litter boxes and brought two of them with me. Before coming back I ordered from Amazon a replacement for each of the two boxes I took from there along with a couple of bags of litter. Our neighbor was kind enough to bring everything in the house for us so I was able to quickly get all the litter boxes filled with litter because I knew that would be needed right away. I wasn’t wrong about that.
One bad thing that happened in West Virginia was that Floki mostly stopped paying attention to Rose. Every morning Rose would sit on a stool at the side of the bed and check her email, Facebook, and I don’t know what else. During that time Floki would come to Rose and let her hold him for a while. While in West Virginia, he never did that. And to throw salt in the wound he would get on my lap right in front of her. The day we got home Floki let Rose pick him up and hold him again. I was very pleased to see that.
Another bad thing that happened up there was my toes almost fell off. Well, not literally, but it felt like they would. Even in Florida my hands and feet always seemed colder than they should be, but in West Virginia, there were times when I felt like I had frostbite on my toes. One evening, on Christmas Day or the day after, I spent quite a while standing in the kitchen. When we finally sat down to eat my toes on my right foot felt frozen and were throbbing with pain. When I took my socks off later I saw they were red and slightly swollen.
I looked up what might be the cause and the closest thing I could come up with was a condition called Chilblains which is defined by the Mayo Clinic as “painful inflammation of small blood vessels in your skin that occur in response to repeated exposure to cold but not freezing air.” One symptom I didn’t have was itching so I wasn’t sure. I also read it was common in very young and very old people. If I did have it, I reasoned, I must be too young.
A couple of days later it happened again so I went to the doctor and she wasn’t certain but agreed that Chilblains was probably what I had and I should go out of my way to keep my feet warm. I think we decided then that we would not be spending Christmas there anymore, even though all of our Christmas decorations are there now.
We have been home for almost two days now and the cats have gone back to their old routines like nothing ever happened. I, for one, am happy to be wearing shorts with no socks.
We got to our hotel room yesterday a little after 2:00 p.m. It was relatively early but the cats needed a potty break and my back was hurting from the car ride.
On the way to West Virginia we stayed at a Home2 by Hilton in Columbia South Carolina. It was a nice room inside the hotel where I didn’t have to worry much about Frankie escaping because even if he got out of the room he would still be contained inside the hotel.. This time we stayed at a Best Western in Walterboro, South Carolina. It was an outside room and not nearly as nice.
Going both ways I wanted our second day to be slightly shorter than our first because I figured we would be sick of driving by the second day, plus we needed more time to settle in at home. So with that in mind, Walterboro was the only option.
Rose typically likes to stay at Hiltons or Marriotts but those hotels, at least in Walterboro, did not allow pets. My only choices were Best Western, Econolodge, Motel 6, etc. We both thought Best Western would be the best of the worst so we picked that one. We may have been wrong.
We got a room near the end and when we pulled in a calico cat immediately came up to our car with a big story. I happened to have Stella and Chewy’s readily available in the truck so I put some down for her while Rose put the top down so we could remove our cats.
Rose thought she was pregnant but then we noticed she was ear tipped. I think she is just smart and knows how to get food out of visitors. It worked on me.
When we got in the room we noticed it smelled like dog. It also was covered with old carpet and Rose was worried about fleas. I wanted to put the litter box on a hard floor, not carpet, for ease of cleaning, but the only hard floor was in the tiny bathroom. I couldn’t put it there. Rose suggested putting it on a towel, which I did.
It wasn’t long before Chris pulled the towel back and then dumped a bunch of litter on the exposed carpet. It was then that I realized I had forgotten to bring a broom and dustpan. All I could do was pick it up with my fingers.
What surprised me was when Chris got into the crate that he was trapped in all day. I found Floki in the smaller crate too but I did not get a photo of that.
I went out later to get dinner and brought some food out for the stray. It was then that I noticed a shy black cat hanging out with the calico. Frankie noticed too.
We left this morning around 6:30. The first thing I did was bring out bowl of wet food and a bowl of dry food for the calico and black cat. The calico was there eating the wet food as I loaded the cats in the car. I never saw the black cat again. Perhaps he was waiting for us to leave.
It is now 8:00 a.m. and Floki is still howling. Yesterday it lasted three hours and then another two hours of on and off crying. Hopefully today will be better.
