Tag Archives: Bad Cat Chris

Bad Cat Chris Versus Spray Bottle

Most cats hate to get wet so a handy spray bottle with water in it is a great tool for curbing bad behavior. At least that is what we thought when we bought one to keep Chris from getting on the counters.

Whenever he would jump on the kitchen counter, one of us would squirt him and he would immediately jump off. We thought after getting wet a dozen times or so he would stop jumping on the counter. Unfortunately, that idea may work with other cats but Chris seems to be immune to many of the behavior correcting techniques that you might read about.There were times when we had to squirt him three or four times within a five-minute period and still, he would come back for more. It was as if he had no long-term memory and would immediately forget what just happened. I know his memory happens to be fine though because many times he would jump off the counter when he saw one of us just pick up the bottle. I think the urge to be bad is just to overwhelming.

: Only photo I could find that shows both counter and stairs (upper right).

The problem got worse when we moved back to Florida because our kitchen counter was not only bigger but it was within jumping distance from the stairs. That meant that he could skip traveling all the way down the stairs and get off at the half way point. That worked in reverse too. He would jump on the counter and then to the stairs.

Then there was the new furniture we got shortly after moving in. Chris took a liking to Rose’s chair and started scratching it. I tried spraying it with a no-scratch spray but again, these “cures” were designed for normal cats. That left the old spray bottle as our only line of defense.

For some reason he would only scratch the chair while we were sitting in the living room. Perhaps he wanted to show us what a bad cat he could be. Sometimes he would scratch the back corner of the chair and other times he would lay on his back, dig his claws into the fabric, and pull himself around the perimeter.

Whenever he would scratch the chair we would squirt him which would end the scratching for about two minutes before it started again.

We even bought a mini spray bottle to keep in the bedroom so we could spray him when he would not let us sleep. That bottle didn’t last long.

I don’t know if it was a willful act of defiance but Chris would chew on the spray bottles. He chewed the small one so much that it was unusable a few weeks after we bought it. The larger one took more time but he kept working on it. After the small bottle stopped working we brought the big one to bed with us. I sometimes had it on the floor next to me and would grab it when Chris was being especially annoying.

When we were able to sleep, Chris was busy chewing on the nozzle. Once when I tried to use it he had turned it to the closed position. Another time he had completely unscrewed it and yet a third time he was able to unscrew the main filler cap without knocking the bottle over. I did that when I grabbed the bottle to spray him. The sprayer went with me and the water dumped onto the carpet.

Eventually he was able to chew the bottle beyond repair so we had to retire it. We never bought another one. It took awhile, but he won.

In other news, I got an email the other day from a british company named Parthenon Entertainment. They want to use a Video of Chris that I had posted on YouTube (http://youtu.be/iFnHCcrlrnI) in an upcoming documentary for National Geographic called “The Wild Side of Cats.” They are collecting more videos than they can use so he may not make it into the final cut, but if he does, that would be really great. Even if they don’t use the video, it is nice to know someone is interested.

I also want to mention that there is no change in Abbey’s condition. The vet said it is “irreversable liver damage” but I don’t have a high level of faith in today’s medical community, human or pet. Don’t get me wrong, I respect what they do but often if there is not a drug that can fix the problem, we are told the problem is unfixable.

Abbey last year

Abbey now

Inside Cat Wants Out

5 Replies

Chris enjoyed a year of patio privileges while we were in Myrtle Beach but after moving back to Dunedin, that was no longer an option. Our condo did not have an enclosed patio so he was stuck inside.

Tigger and Abbey didn’t mind but Chris would often cry to be let out or he would try to race out the door when someone opened it. If he got out the front door (technically, the parking lot was the back of the building, but I consider the main door the front) he would just plop down to the ground and stretch. For Chris, it was not about exploring, it was more about celebrating the victory. Anyway, since we were on the second floor, there was not much for him to explore.

After awhile I started to let him out and I would stand there and watch him roll around. Sometimes he would investigate the area around the front door but he would stay within a few feet. Eventually he started venturing farther and farther away until he was at the stairs.

Notice how close the carport roof is to the staircase.

Once he reached the stairs he was amazingly cautious for a cat that showed no fear inside the house. When he started to get up enough courage to go down the stairs, that is when I stopped letting him out. My biggest fear was that he would get up on the roof of the carport, which was alongside the staircase, and then I would have to get up there and chase him down.

That is almost what happened one day when he unexpectedly bolted out the door as I was leaving. He ran to the stairs and took a few steps down, hesitated for a moment, then stepped through the slats and onto the carport roof. I got there just in time to reach over the railing and grab him. We were much more diligent about guarding the door after that.

I don’t have many pictures of the patio but here you can see the slats are wide enough for a cat to get through.

Our other door was a slider that led out to the patio. It was not screened like our last patio so we could not let Chris out there. This, of course, did not stop him from running out the door anyway. At first he would just roll around like he did at the front door, but then he discovered he could get through the slats to the neighbor’s patio. Before long, every time he would get out he would immediately cross over to the neighbor’s side and then roll around just out of reach. I would then have to go down my stairs and walk across to the neighbor’s side to retrieve Chris. He would then sometimes run back over to our side as if it was a game.

Our condo was just right of far left. I usually had to walk around with no shoes, which is risky because of the sand spurs.

Keep in mind that Chris is a very smart cat and would hang back, away from the door, and pretend he was not interested. He would then race out the door as soon as it was opened. He once ran across to the neighbors patio and discovered her door was cracked open. To Chris, this was an invitation to go inside, so he did.

I knew Chris had an outside cat in him and I didn’t want to suppress that so I bought a harness and leash for him so I could take him out without worrying about the trouble he could get into. This was difficult because he would not let me put the harness on him. When I finally did get it on him, the first thing he did when we got outside was lay down and kick at it with his back feet until he was able to slip out of part of it. I brought him back in and tried several times over the next few weeks.

Sometimes he would not try to get it off. He would slowly make his way down the stairs, smelling everything along the way. Each time he would go a little further until he was on the ground. I don’t know if it was because of the leash but he was not as adventurous as I thought he would be.

Other times Chris would try to get the harness off and would almost always succeed. I don’t know if I should credit Chris’s intelligence for that or my stupidity but, in either case, the harness idea didn’t work out as I hoped.

Sometimes, during the cooler months, we could leave the front door open so Chris could look out the screen, but most of the time Chris just had to enjoy the outdoors like the other cats by looking out one of the upstairs’ bedroom windows.

Believe it or not, Chris is able to cause problems by just looking out the window. Stay tuned for that story.

The Continuing Saga of Poop

When Three Equals Two

11 Replies

As I mentioned earlier, we had to leave Princess and Alex with people we knew in Myrtle Beach because the condo we were moving into had a two pet limit. Normally, I don’t like to lie. I feel that honesty and good character are very important traits. That is why I felt guilty telling our landlord we had two cats instead of three.

When we owned a condo in the same development, I did not feel guilty having five cats. I guess it was because we knew the rule was really there to limit the number of dogs barking and pooping in the yard. We felt that the Condo Nazis had no business knowing what went on inside our condo.

Now that we were renting, it was not really our condo and the landlord did have the right to know. He was not a bad guy and if he knew we had three cats there was a chance he would not have cared, but I was not willing to risk telling him. He was also on the condo association board so technically, he was one of the Condo Nazis.

Abbey was our ace in the hole. She was just shy enough that she would hide when strangers came in the house. The problem was that she would quickly overcome her shyness once the stranger was in the house for a relatively long time or if they were frequent visitors.

One of the first things we noticed was that the closet light in our bedroom did not work. Neither did the wall outlet next to the closet. We told the landlord about it but when he did not make it a priority to fix it, we did not push the issue because we did not want him spending too much time upstairs, where Abbey would have been hiding. I ended up replacing the outlet myself, thinking that would solve both problems, but no such luck.

He did end up coming a few times to fix other problems, all downstairs. Whenever he would come, Chris would be right there investigating what he was doing. He even came to fix the toilet while we were not home and he told us Chris was on his shoulders while he was trying to work.

Tigger would come down too while he was here but he usually stayed about half-way up the stairs and watched from a distance. It was at those times that I wished Tigger was Abbey because at least Tigger could be confused for Chris from a distance.

Usually when the landlord was here I hung around with him and kept looking for Abbey to show her face. That did happen once, maybe twice, but I was able to run upstairs and shoo her back into the bedroom. I felt like such a criminal.

He did finally come one day to investigate the electrical problem and was there for about an hour without finding a solution. By some miracle, Abbey stayed in the other bedroom the entire time.

Hopefully I won’t have bad karma for what I did. I like to think that protecting the welfare of the cats was the greater good.

Abbey, Tigger and Chris at our condo.

Bad Cat Chris Videos

Chris the Thief

The Great Upheaval

7 Replies

Sixteen months after moving to Myrtle Beach, it was time to go back to Florida. Rose was asked to manage the property she left when she was an assistant manager. It was another promotion for her since the Florida property was more than double the size of the Myrtle Beach property. More importantly, we really wanted to go back to where we belonged.

Since Rose did not want to live on the property, we ended up renting a condo at the same complex that we used to own. We knew it was nice there and did not want any unpleasant surprises, since we couldn’t see the rentals first hand.

The big problem was that renting almost always means two pets. This place had a two pet rule in their bylaws. When we owned it was easier to sneak in a few extra cats, but as a renter, forget it. We decided we could get away with no more than three. That meant that two cats had to go. It was something I was not prepared to do and even tried to talk Rose into moving into one of her own apartments. At least I would have some pull with the landlord. Unfortunately, that did not work.

It was decided that Princess was an obvious choice because she didn’t like any of the other cats and absolutely despised Abbey. She would spend her days hiding under Rose’s dressing table and hiss and growl at Abbey when she came in the same room. Tony, the maintenance supervisor, took Princess for his little girls, who planned on spoiling her.

The next choice was difficult. Chris, we knew, could not be tolerated by anybody and would wind up back at the shelter so, in this case, being bad was good, for him anyway.

That left Tigger and the sister and brother, Abbey and Alex. It was not a matter of which one we cared about more, it was who we thought would be less affected by the separation. In this case, being good was bad. Alex turned out to be the better choice to stay behind because he wasn’t as needy. He also seemed to have become more of a loner as he aged. Don’t get me wrong, he was one of the friendliest cat I knew, he just was becoming less social with the other cats.

One of my last photos of Alex with Chris, of course, on top of him.

Alan, the maintenance technician, took Alex. It was nice to know our cats had someone to take care of them. I could not leave them in a cage at a shelter.

I brought Alex to Alan’s apartment a couple of days before we left and then went over a couple of times to visit him. He seemed happy there. I hated to leave him but that’s life sometimes.

I decided to plan the drive to Florida better than the drive to South Carolina. The first time we drove straight through and that was hard on the cats. This time I calculated the half-way point to be somewhere near the Florida border. I had checked hotels in Brunswick Georgia and Jacksonville Florida and found the ones near the expressway that took pets. This time we were going to leave later in the day and spend the night at a hotel.

Truck driver Rose with the cats.

On November 12, 2010, we spent all morning and part of the afternoon loading the rental truck. When that was done, we were left with the hard part, packing the cats. We had to put the cats between us on the front seat of the truck. In the large carrier, we put Tigger and Abbey because they get along well together. Chris went on top in the small carrier because we thought he would appreciate being able to look out the window.

The cats were pretty good for the most part and we made it to Jacksonville before stopping for the night. They were all happy to be out of their boxes, especially Chris, who had to investigate every nook and cranny of the hotel room.

The next day we drove the rest of the way to Dunedin. When we arrived we had two men come and help us unload the truck. That took many hours and the cats had to be shut up in the bathroom the entire time. I supposed after being in a truck all morning, it was a welcome respite.

Our new place had two levels and Chris shot up and down the stairs like an old pro. He would sometimes skip two or three stairs as he bounded down, usually hitting the ground floor and sliding into the bathroom door. Abbey, however, would come down very carefully, first the two front feet then the two rear feet, one step at a time.

Our new home with screen-less patio.

The biggest problem with our new home was that our patio was not screened nor could it be, so the cats had to stay inside. The other cats didn’t mind but poor Chris was like a bird with no wings.

The Great Escape

8 Replies

We discovered right away that Chris was not going to be content as an indoor cat. Not long after we brought him home, I opened the front door to come in and he raced onto the third floor breezeway. I wasn’t concerned at first because I assumed he was unfamiliar with stairs and his hesitation to go down confirmed that…or so I thought.

As soon as I tried to pick him up, he shot down the stairs, barely pausing on the second floor before racing to the ground. I set the groceries I was carrying in front of the door and gave chase. When I got to him investigating what was in the bushes, he saw me and ran off to the side of the building.

I was eventually able to catch him and struggled to carry him back upstairs. He was fine until I got halfway up the stairs and then he was determined to jump free.

We had a small patio that I had rigged with screening so the cats would not be able to jump down. It was a fairly long way down and I did not want any of them to get hurt. I also did not want to lose any of them. Shortly after Chris’s first foray outside, he was on the patio one morning while Rose and I were getting ready for work. Rose heard a cat crying outside in the distance and thought a cat was in distress. It was too far away to be any of our cats so I went outside to have a look.

When I got downstairs I saw a gold cat crying to get inside the apartment two floors below. There was a bowl of water next to him so obviously this cat belonged there, but I was amazed at how much he looked like Chris. As I got closer, I realized that it was Chris. How did he get outside and why was he desperate to get into the wrong apartment?

Later that day Rose talked to the woman who lived on the first floor and the pieces of the puzzle started to come together. I can only think of one way he could have escaped the patio. He must have squeezed his body, like a cockroach, through the impossibly small opening under the railing and then jumped to the ground. I only know this was possible because I saw him squeeze under our dresser the first day we got him. We had to pull a drawer out to get him out.

Chris on patio – notice the small opening under railing – Photo taken two days after we brought him home.

Once on the ground, and probably after a thorough investigation of the area, he must have assumed his home was on the first floor so he cried to come in. The women living there opened the door and Chris ran in like he owned the place. She said he ran around the living room in apparent distress. He was probably wondering how we changed the furniture so quick.

She opened a can of tuna for him, hoping that would calm him down, but he wasn’t interested. Eventually she put him outside with a bowl of water. That is where I found him.

He has since turned out to be a great lover of the outdoors which is a shame because he is an inside only cat. Occasionally he gets out but those are stories for another time.

Who Needs Sleep?

8 Replies

The first night with Chris was rough. Actually, every night for the last two and a half years have been rough, but we were not prepared for Chris at that time.

Normally our cats would gradually filter into our room at night and congregate on my side of the bed, eventually taking up about a third of the space, That was the biggest problem we had no deal with. Suddenly, we had a five and a half month old kitten who loved to bite. It did not take long to realize why he was returned to the shelter.

He would not sit still. If he wasn’t laying accross my neck and biting my nose, he was laying on top of Rose’s head and biting her ear. Rose used to tell people jokingly, “You can wear him as a scarf, you can wear him as a hat…” If the face biting wasn’t bad enough, he would see our toes move under the sheet and attack them. Ouch!

Removing him from the bedroom wasn’t an option because he would cry at the door and worse, dig at the carpet. It was very rough for a while getting enough sleep. Even today, on his best day, he wakes us up at 5:00 a.m.

We tried every thing we could think of. I tried putting something in front of the door so he couldn’t dig at the carpet but then he would come around into the bathroom, which had two entrances, and cry and scratch at the door relentlessly. I would have closed the second door but the litter boxes were in there.

We tried pulling the blanket over our heads so he couldn’t bite us but then it was like a game to him and he would work at digging his way in. I even bought a tube of calming gel but using it on Chris was like trying to calm a hurricane by blowing in the opposite direction. Eventually I felt like my marrage could be in jepordy if I couldn’t find a way for us to get enough sleep.

Day two – Chris attacks stuffed animal

Chris Comes Home

11 Replies

November 14, 2009, a day that will live in infamy. That was the day we decided to bring Chris home. We made that decision even after knowing that Chris was adopted by another couple two or three weeks earlier and returned the next day because he kept them up all night with his biting. This is like buying a car after finding out it was in a wreck.

We got to the shelter and visited with Chris one more time before making the final decision. Of course, it wasn’t much of a decision because we brought a cat carrier with us, fully expecting that it would come home with a cat in it. We had no trouble putting him in the carrier. We just opened the door and he walked right in. He also gave us no trouble on the way home. I think he was ready for an adventure.

When we got home the other cats were not happy. They hissed and growled at Chris but it did not seem to bother him much. Unlike Abbey and Flash, who hid under the bed the first day, Chris went exploring. He investigated every nook and cranny of his new home. He also stayed clear of the other cats for a while, but that did not last long. Soon he was jumping on them and biting their necks. I’m not sure if he was trying to establish himself as the alpha cat or he just wanted someone to play with.

Next time I will talk about the first night. Stay tuned…

Chris getting comfortable with Rose on his first day home.

Updated 02/18/2015: This is a video of Chris exploring after his adoption.