When I met Rose, we both had an eight year old son living with us. My son, Chris, was somewhat easy-going and spent too much time indoors playing video games. (Just a side note: Bad Cat Chris was not named after my son. That is the name he had when we got him. See “What’s in a Name“) Rose’s son, Nick, was hyper-active and it was difficult to keep him in the house. When we all moved in together, we thought Nick would motivate Chris to go outside, but instead, Chris got Nick interested in video games. I don’t know if undesirable behavior is more influential or not, but in our household, that seems to be the case.
Take Puck for example. He came to us as a kitten and had surprisingly good behavior, but lately he seems to be picking up some of Chris’s habits. Recently he started jumping on my shoulders. I don’t consider this a bad behavior but I think he learned it from watching Chris. What he didn’t learn was how to stabilize himself. Chris is a natural and never seems off-balance but I have to move carefully when Puck is on my shoulders because I fear he will lose his balance and dig his claws into me, which has already happened a couple of times.
The other day he picked up another trick from Chris’s playbook and used me to get onto the refrigerator (See “Chris’s Springboard“) and from there to the top of the cabinets. Now he skips me and hops onto the counter, then the fridge and up to the cabinets, just like Chris. He hasn’t yet learned to jump from the fridge to the cabinets on the opposite side of the kitchen but that will probably be next.
Bad Cat Chris and Puck on top of the Cabinets
Now Puck is starting to bother us when we are sleeping. He is not bad yet but if he gets to be like Chris, I won’t feel guilt about shutting the door and keeping them all out at night.
Update: I created a motivational poster using the image above. Click here to see it.
Lately, every once in a while, I will hear the sound of a cat in distress. The first time I heard it I thought one of our cats was hurt or stuck somewhere. When I looked for the source, I found Tigger locked in a stare-down with Chris. He had Chris cornered on the top landing of the staircase and surprisingly, was the aggressor in this confrontation.
When I showed up, the distraction gave Chris an exit opportunity and he took it. He bounded down the stairs with Tigger hot on his tail (literally). When they reached the living room, Tigger jumped on Chris and attacked him. I tried to separate them but it was only temporary. Tigger chased him down and attacked him again. Usually once a cat retreats the fight is over but not this time.
It was shocking because Tigger has always been such a nice cat. I know the old saying is true; what goes around, comes around, and Chris definitely was due for something to “come around,” but this was not the play fighting that Chris had annoyed the other cats with for three years. This was an attack by a pissed off cat, and it has repeated several times over the past couple of weeks.
In between the attacks I see the two of them laying together and even washing each other, so I don’t think Tigger has developed a hatred for Chris. I can only assume that he has become grumpy in his old age and Chris is doing something to annoy him (big surprise there), but I have not seen what starts the fights yet so I will have to watch them more closely. Hopefully I won’t have to bring Tigger in for anger management.
If you are a regular reader, you know that sleeping with Chris in the house can be very difficult. It has been a constant tug-o-war with each side having the advantage until the other side figures out a way to counter it. If you are a new reader, I will put links to some earlier stories about this struggle at the end of this post.
Currently, Chris has not only gained the advantage, but I have run out of ideas to get back to a normal night’s sleep. I feel like my sleep bank is overdrawn and if I don’t make a deposit soon I will get sick and perhaps even fired because I feel tired at work all the time. So far, it hasn’t affected my job, but I know mistakes happen when you are over-tired.
On Christmas Eve I couldn’t keep my eyes open in church. Our pastor is a nice guy and I don’t want him to think that I think he is boring. I was also having trouble keeping my eyes open on Christmas Day when my son and his wife were here. I was actually closing my eyes while he was talking to me. I had to struggle to keep them open.
After finally figuring out how to keep Chris out of the bedroom, I had to abandon it, first because Abbey got sick and then because of our new kitten Puck. For a kitten, he is remarkably well-behaved. Of course he plays and does some things he is not supposed to but he never bothers us at night. He also doesn’t scratch on the furniture or force his way into the cabinets or poop on the floor like a certain gold cat that we know. Because of this, Rose feels bad because to keep Chris out of the bedroom, we also have to keep out Puck and Tigger.
So, for now, he has full access to our bedroom at night, and every morning at four o’clock, he wakes me up. It is a mystery to me how he knows when it is four o’clock but somehow he does. He will get up next to me and either bite my nose or start treading on my bare skin. When this starts, I look at the clock and almost without fail, it is within five minutes of four o’clock.
Last night Rose clipped his nails. I thought that might help me tolerate the treading until he got tired and stopped. That didn’t work. I think having short nails just makes him extend them out farther. I try desperately to block his claws with my hands or the sheet but he just moves to another location. I grab his paws but he pulls away. I push him off the bed but he jumps back on it. I hold him down until I annoy him but he just moves to above my head where I can’t do that.
Sometimes I am succesful in keeping him from treading on my neck or back. When that happens, he pulls at my scalp. Sometimes he grabs my nose or the side of my lips with his claws and pulls. He is trying to get me to turn my head so he can bite my nose. I do not know why he must bite my nose but I do know it is very annoying. Out of frustration, I will sometimes bite his nose, hoping he will get the hint, but he doesn’t.
I think soon I will have to start going to bed at eight o’clock. My senior years are starting early.
When I started this blog over six months ago, I said I would tell his story from the beginning. I knew eventually I would catch up to the present and that time has come. I am sure I missed some stories along the way and if I remember them I will relate them to you, but for now, I will tell of Chris’s misadventures as they happen.
I have thought about what I want to do in the future. I have two ideas that I could perhaps tie together.
First, I have thought for some time about starting an animal welfare organization. The thought came to me around the end of 2008, give or take six months. It hit me after I heard about one of the stray cats that my sister-in-law, Felice, takes care of. Someone apparently poisoned this cat and she had to spend $500 of her own money to save its life. She is not wealthy but spends money to feed, fix and keep these animals healthy. I thought, if we could start a non-profit organization, than some of that burden could be helped by donations. Even if we got no donations, except for our own money that we put into it, at least it would be tax-deductible.
The start-up cost was an issue at first and then I moved to South Carolina. When I moved back in 2010 I was unemployed for three months and then under employed for another six months. Eventually, by the beginning of the year I had the $400 I thought I would need to start the organization. I even filled out the form at LegalZoom but something prompted me to investigate the IRS requirements. I had done so earlier but missed the fact that they charge a $400 application fee for tax-exempt status. This put the idea on hold until that $400 was spent on something else. I am still considering it, if Felice is still interested, and perhaps I will actually do something in a couple of months.
My second thought was to write an e-book about Bad Cat Chris. I have already written his story, I just need to merge some of the articles and expand upon some others. If I can put it together in a cohesive way and spend the time necessary to make it a quality story (not that it isn’t already), I think I could sell a few books.
I would put it on Kindle first and perhaps sell it for around $2.99. At that price I would get a 70% royalty ( kindle gives 70% for books priced 2.99 to 9.99 and 30% for all others). If I use the royalties, at least at first, to fund my first idea, maybe each would help the other.
Right now there is not enough people who know about Bad Cat Chris for any real success, but I am working to get the word out. Any help from my readers would be much appreciated. Any advice you can share would also be appreciated. You can also help by “liking” Chris on his facebook page (facebook.com/badcatchris) or following him on Twitter (twitter.com/BadCatChris).
Bad Cat Chris on Curio Cabinet
Now since that is out of the way, let’s talk about Chris. He jumped up on the curio cabinet again. I first talked about this in the story Chris Takes the High Ground. I am so worried that the force of his jump will cause the cabinet to rock and fall over. If that happens the damage would be great but my biggest worry is that he could be crushed by it.
I also uploaded a new video to YouTube.
This was taken with my phone so the quality is less than perfect but it is worth watching. I uploaded this to my old channel youtube.com/animallaughs instead of Chris’s channel youtube.com/badcatchris because Chris is not the main part of the video.
I may get a video camera for Christmas (if I stay off the naughty list) so we can see Chris in full HD. I can’t wait.
Chris’s three-year reign of terror has ended. Okay, maybe that statement is a bit exaggerated but there has been a turning point in the Bad Cat Chris household.
Previously, Chris was able to dominate the other cats without fear of reprisal. He would often, out of the blue, pounce on Tigger or Abbey, pin them down and bite them on the neck. After a few minutes, he would then cozy up along side one of them like nothing had happened. Now that Abbey is gone and our new Kitten Puck is here, it is not so easy for him anymore. Puck fights back!
The two of them spend much of the evening going at it. Chris will attack Puck and Puck will counter with his own attack. I often see Chris as the submissive one during some of their many battles. It makes me think of Karma and the saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
Although it is no longer surprising, it is still amazing that at over three and a half years old, Chris still has the energy and personality of a kitten. The two of them seem like a perfect match for each other.
Now they are a great match, but I know that a year from now, puck will have matured and Chris will still be Chris.
Tigger, Chris and Puck
On another note, I just learned that Alex died. If you read the post, The Great Upheaval, you would know that Alex had to be left behind when we moved back to Florida from Myrtle Beach. He stayed with a friend that we knew would take good care of him, and he did.
Alex was the brother of Abbey, who died two months ago (story here). Both were great cats and only eight years old. They will be missed.
When we moved to our current home and Chris was able to go out on the patio again, we thought he would be happy. Unfortunately, it is like that old saying, “Give someone an inch and they will take a mile.” Chris was not happy with his inch. Being partly exposed to the outside just made him want it even more.
Every time one of us came home or left while the cat door was open, we had to figure out how to get through the door without Chris getting out. I use the past tense but it is still true today. Sometimes I would just let him out because it was easier than fighting with him. At first, just like at our last place, Chris would just roll around on the sidewalk, but soon he started making a beeline for the front yard.
Bad Cat Chris in bushes
He did not go far. He just ran around the front yard, investigating every movement. For awhile we thought it was a little cute. We would let him out after listening to him cry for a while, then I would try to catch him after four or five minutes. Of course, this wasn’t easy. He would usually wait until I got close and then bolt away. I would then have to walk across the yard to get him and he would run back. I think this game of “Catch me if you can” was fun for Chris but I got little enjoyment from it.It wasn’t long, however, before he discovered that the outside world had an ample supply of lizards. The first thing he did when he got outside was look for lizards. Sometimes he would catch one as soon as he got out. If he didn’t find one right away, the lizards would hide. It was funny watching him sometimes because he would be searching through the bushes while several lizards hung very still on trees opposite of Chris’s field of vision.
When he did catch one, I would have to get it out of his mouth before he killed it. This usually resulted in some resistance along with some growling. We soon decided that, for the sake of the lizard population, we would try to resist giving in to his begging to go outside.
You can see what a great strategic position he is in when he waits under the cat perch.
Chris is a very smart cat and can easily adapt, so when we stopped letting him out, he changed his strategy. He started laying under the cat perch, especially when he knew someone was leaving. It is the perfect spot because we can’t pick him up from there and we also can’t hold him down without blocking the door from opening.
As usual, we change our strategy, Chris changes his, we change ours to counter and it goes on and on. It is like playing chess with a cat. When he started hiding under the perch, I started opening the door slightly to lure him out. When he went for the opening I would quickly shut the door and grab him.
Chris countered by waiting under the perch. He is too smart to let himself be fooled more than once or twice so he held his ground until he had a clear shot out the door.
My next move was to give the cats treats when someone had to come in or go out. All the cats would come running for treats which was my chance to close the cat door. This actually worked for a while. I think the lure of treats was too great, even for Chris. Eventually though, he stopped falling for it.
Even when it did work, it was not foolproof because he would sometime sneak out the main door when we tried to leave and park himself under the perch. If I wasn’t in a hurry, I would just let him out because catching him outside was easier than getting him out from his little fortress.
Chris soon stopped looking for lizards and started eating grass. I know it is natural for cats to eat grass so I would give him a few minutes before bringing him in.
Even today Chris is still getting outside. On Halloween I was very carefull to open the door just a crack to give candy out but that was all it took. Aren’t cats supposed to be afraid of strangers wearing masks?
Cats, by nature, seem to like being up high. I suppose it is the predator instinct and it is no more obvious than in a cat like Chris. I mentioned before that he likes getting on top of things and our new apartment seemed like it was built with him in mind.
For starters, our kitchen cabinets do not go to the ceiling so there is a gap above them that Chris loves to get into. he usually jumps on the counter, then to the refrigerator and from there it is an easy step up. Sometimes he will leap from the fridge to the cabinets on the opposite side. I worry that he will miss and hurt himself but so far, so good.
I don’t know how he does this
Then there is the handrail at the upstairs landing, it overlooks the living room and is about 12 to 15 feet above the floor. It is only about an inch and a half wide and I often see him jumping up on the railing.
There is also the china cabinet. He would get up there when we were in the living room watching television. I think he may do that to show us how bad he can be. To get up there he jumps on Rose’s chair, then to the fire-place mantle and then up on top of the cabinet.
Bad Cat Chris on China Cabinet
Rose tried putting decorations on the mantle and the top of the cabinet to discourage him from jumping up there but he did anyway. Some of the items were breakable and I was worried he was going to break something but somehow he was able to make three jumps in quick succession without disturbing anything. It seemed impossible from my perspective but yet, there he was on the cabinet with nothing out-of-place.
Finally there was the mystery of Rose’s curio cabinet. It is at the end of the hallway with seemingly nothing close enough to use as a springboard, yet Chris still managed to get on top of it. Usually I would hear a loud noise and I would look to see the curio cabinet rocking slightly and Chris sitting on top of it. I was concerned that he might send it crashing down, possibly on top of him.
Curio Cabinet – Bathroom door is on left
Fortunately he did not get up there often but each time he did I was baffled by how he did it. It is a jump of well over six feet straight up. Rose concluded he jumped on the dining room table, then to the top of the blinds over the sliding glass door. From there, she thought, he walked to the edge and made the five foot jump to the cabinet. I was not convinced. The ceiling was too close to allow him the arc that he needed.
I finally saw him make the jump out of the corner of my eye one day. He stood on the end of the counter in the bathroom and made the long jump through the doorway to the top of the cabinet. It was just within the range of possibility and Chris had figured it out long before me. I may never have thought of that if I had not seen it. Makes me wonder who the smarter species is.
Late in 2011 we decided to move out of our waterfront condo and live where Rose works. Part of the reason for doing that was to save about $400 a month. The other reason was for convenience. Since Rose managed the property that we were moving to, she would not have to drive to work and she could better keep an eye on the property. It also cut in half my drive to work and eventually led to me being able to ride my bicycle there. (See newlybent.wordpress.com)
It was also better for the cats. I don’t think they appreciated the waterfront view as much as we did. What they wanted, especially Chris, was to go outside. Well, that wasn’t an option, but the new place had a screened in patio that the condo did not have.
We spent weeks packing, during which time our home was basically turned upside-down. The cats knew something was going on but they have been through moves before and did not seem too stressed about it. Abbey and Tigger had been through three moves with us and who knows how many more before we adopted them. Chris had moved once with us but he was also transferred from one shelter to another before we found him. In addition, he was adopted and then returned.
When the movers came, we had to put the cats in the bathroom until they were finished. They were not happy about that. Abbey and Tigger stayed relatively quiet but Chris wanted out and was not shy about letting us know.
Our new apartment is one of the few townhomes that are on the property. It has two floors with the master bedroom upstairs and another bedroom downstairs. I had a plan to finally keep Chris out of the bedroom so we could sleep. I bought a plastic runner and cut it to fit just right under the bedroom door so he couldn’t dig up the carpet. I thought since he was not accustomed to being in the bedroom at night, he wouldn’t miss it.
That plan made perfect sense in theory but I didn’t anticipate Rose feeling bad for the cats after putting them through another move. This of course meant that we had to continue to put up with Chris in the bedroom at night. I tried using my plastic runner a few days later but since he knew what he was missing he sat outside the door crying and digging. He quickly realized he couldn’t did through the plastic so he did the next best thing, he started digging at carpet next to the plastic. I think he knows he can’t dig his way into the room; he just wants to annoy us enough to open the door.
I added the objects on the sides because he was digging next to the plastic.
Even with the brick in the way, Chris finds a way to ruin the carpet.
I thought we could put a litter box on the patio and put him out at night but Rose vetoed that idea. I think she was afraid a visitor would smell poop when they came to visit, or worse, she would smell it.
Eventually we found something that changed everything, but that is a story for another time, so I hope you keep reading.
People that think dogs are smarter than cats haven’t met Chris. Dogs may be more trainable but that is only because they are more dependent on humans. Chris on the other hand can’t be trained but he certainly can learn, and he has amazing deductive reasoning skills.
For example, we had a storage room under the stairs in the condo. The door to the closet was a standard door with a standard round door knob. One day Chris decided he wanted to investigate what was behind that door. He worked on it for a while pulling at the bottom to no avail.
Eventually he tried reaching for the doorknob, which he could barely reach. He would grab it with both paws for a split second and then drop to the ground and pull at the bottom of the door. Then he would repeat the routine. Eventually he was able to turn the knob and unlatch the door. It didn’t pop open until he performed the second half of his plan, which was pulling it at the bottom. Once he learned this trick, we couldn’t keep him out of the closet.
We also had the accordion type closet doors upstairs. He taught himself how to open those doors too. He would lay on the floor and pull the middle out untill it popped slightly open. He then would go to the open crack and pulled on it until he could get inside.
If I was a criminal I would bring him along to help crack safes.
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.
Bad Cat Chris 