Can you believe Chris is fifteen? Sometimes, like after waking up to find puke and poop all over the house, I think he won’t make it to his sixteenth birthday. Other times, like as I write this, I see he has climbed up to his perch with no problem. That gives me hope.
He can also still be bad, although in more subtle ways, like turning over his food bowls.
I’m not going to dwell on how much time he has left, instead, I will enjoy each day he is with us. I will also remember some of his antics when he was young.
A couple of people said happy birthday to Floki the other day even though I didn’t post about it. It reminded me his birthday was coming up and I made a note to look it up when I got home, which I forgot to do until this morning.
Floki was born on or around the eighteenth of April 2016. Since we don’t know his exact birthday, it could very well be today. Even so, I feel bad that other people remember before I do.
I tried to find a recent photo of Floki alone but everything recent has Chris lying next to him or on top of him. The photo below was from two months ago.
Hopefully I won’t forget Chris’s birthday next month.
Today we celebrate Chris turning fourteen. As I mentioned before, we don’t know his actual birthday but we celebrate today because Chris was about six months old when we adopted him on November 14, 2009.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to look back at his life in pictures.
October 3, 2009. Chris at adoption center with Rose. Almost six weeks before adoption.November 14, 2009. First photo of Chris at home.November 25, 2009. Alex, Abbey, and Tigger surround Chris.February 13, 2010. Chris sees first snow.April 4, 2010. Chris takes over baby seat.April 28, 2010. Abbey scolds Chris in front of Tigger.June 8, 2011. Mocking bird does not like ChrisJune 9, 2011. Mocking Bird still does not like Chris.June 16, 2012. Chris catches one of many lizards.July 1, 2012. Chris does not understand danger.
December 28, 2012. Chris the acrobat.
November 15, 2013. Chris working on his tan.February 1, 2014. Chris likes his grass.February 4, 2014. Chris is a lover and a fighter. Here he is with Puck.April 27, 2014. It’s no fun being bad alone. Here he teaches Frankie his skills.March 21, 2015. Here is Chris showing Frankie how to catch a lizard.July 18, 2016. Chris becomes a father figure to Floki.November 27, 2016. Chris still knows how to get into things.February 10, 2017. Still a climber.February 8, 2018. Chris is a lover and a biter.July 12, 2018. There’s no hiding the catnip from Chris.February 7, 2019. Chris is now fully grown.August 11, 2020. Chris’s obsession with kibble.March 17, 2021. Chris loves Floki.November 14, 2022. . . . and this bed was too small.April 9, 2023. Chris loves Frankie and Floki.
I hope you enjoyed our little trip down memory lane.
My wife is on a business trip in Virginia right now. She texted me last night to remind me it was Floki’s birthday and to go out and buy him a new toy. I’m usually the one in the family that remembers important dates but I dropped the ball this time.
I don’t know exactly when Floki was born. When we got him on the fourth of July I was told he and his brother were about six weeks old when they were found on Memorial Day. At the time, I figured April 18 would be a good day to call his birthday.
Here he is at the vet’s office where we adopted him.
Here he is on the first day home with Chris.
Ten days later he was quite comfortable in our house.
He gradually developed his dark color.
And he filled out a bit.
He has become an important part of the trio.
Today I will be off to the pet store, but what do you get a cat that has everything?
Someone recently commented on an old post where I mentioned that I was worried because Chris was almost eight at the time and we had lost three cats, Tigger, Abbey, and Alex, all at eight years old. Now Chris is thirteen and still going strong. That is not to say he doesn’t have problems. He is still prone to ear infections, he is quite a bit overweight, and he possibly has arthritis to some degree.
Age has taken a toll on his “bad” behavior. He no longer fills his days with naughtiness, but he can still be plenty annoying. What hasn’t changed is his affectionate behavior. Chris has always been the most loving cat I have ever seen, both with humans and other cats, and that has not changed one bit.
He started out a little love bug . . .
Chris at adoption center with Rose.
. . . and now he is a big love bug.
I can only hope Chris will be with us for a long time because the void he will leave behind will be way too big to ever fill.
Today Chris turns twelve years old. In cat years, he is a senior, but he is also like a child and sometimes like a baby who needs to be held. Of course, this is just his estimated birthday. When we adopted him he was about six months old so I just subtracted six months from his Gotcha Day and came up with May 14, 2009.
He has been a part of our family for so long that I just don’t know what we would do without him. Sure, he can be incredibly annoying at times but he is also incredibly sweet and affectionate.
He loved people from the first day I saw him and had no trouble seeking attention from strangers, like my wife the first time she visited him at the shelter.
Chris meets Rose
The above photo was taken almost six weeks before we brought Chris home. Can you imagine a cat as special as Chris being overlooked for so long? I was told he was adopted once and brought back the next day because he was too annoying, but I don’t remember if it was before this photo was taken or after.
Of course, he gave us a lot of trouble too, but we persevered. How could we not? He was so funny to watch. The first thing he did was take over as head cat the day he arrived.
He also constantly threw himself on top of the other cats, much to their displeasure.
Abbey anoyed with Chris.
He still does that today.
Another thing he used to do was get on people shoulders, especially mine.
Other cats would see Chris on my shoulders and they would get on my shoulders too but Chris was a natural at shoulder riding. The other cats always seemed nervous and unstable.
Chris didn’t get his “Bat Cat” moniker for nothing. He gave us plenty of trouble too. It was a constant battle to get him to stop doing things we didn’t want him to do, like get on the counters. All of our cats get on the counters today simply because Chris won the counter wars and we surrendered.
He also started pooping in the tub, at first, and then moved on to pooping outside the boxes. He didn’t always do it but it was enough to where I worried that my wife was going to make me choose her or the cat. I think that went on for four years or more. The solution came on accident when we moved to a smaller home and consolidated our litter boxes in one room, instead of having them spread around the house. It seems if one box was not perfect, he wanted another box right there. He certainly wasn’t going to make the effort to go to another room.
Chris was also good at getting into closets, and still is but he doesn’t care about it as much these days.
This last one was considered for a documentary about cats but didn’t make the final cut, probably because the resolution was not high enough.
Chris was also a champion of getting on top of things that our other cats would not attempt.
I don’t know how he does thisView from below
Many of those behaviors are in the past, partly because of Chris’s age but I think mostly because of his weight. He is what we affectionately call a “carb addict.” He loves his kibble. I try to not give him too much but he wears me down. He annoys the crap out of me when I am working so I give him a little kibble in order to get some work done. I usually do something else first so he won’t associate annoying me with getting what he wants but he is a smart cat and I doubt I am fooling him.
All in all, we have been very fortunate to have a cat that has really touched our hearts the way Chris has. I sometimes think about those people who returned Chris. They just have no idea what they gave up just so they could get a good night’s sleep.
It just occurred to me that today is Chris’s birthday. I should have had a big, elaborate post planned for his birthday but instead all I have is a quickly thrown together post with a photo of Chris on top of our kitchen cabinets on his fourth birthday, which I have never posted before to my knowledge.
We don’t know exactly when Chris was born but since he was about six months old when we adopted him I just celebrate his birthday six months before his gotcha day. I will have to make sure he gets plenty of Stella and Chewy’s today for a treat.
Yesterday our little boy turned four and we missed it because I made a stupid mistake. We actually don’t know his exact birthday but I was told that Floki and his brother were left in a carrier at Walmart on Memorial day and they were about six weeks old at the time so I did the math and came up with April 18th. I then had Alexa remind me of that date but for some reason thought Saturday was the 16th and I had made a mistake. It reminds me of the old joke, “I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken.” This time being wrong about being wrong was a mistake.
I’m four years old? What is that in dog years?
In either case, my wife wanted to celebrate “early” with a cake. I told her it would have to be a tuna cake but she din’t like that idea but she wanted me to pick up some tuna for him as a treat. Since I had to get cat food anyway, I looked for something special and found something called Churu that were squeeze tubes of different flavors of treats. I chose the chicken recipe.
I opened two of the four tubes and squirted it on paper plates for the cats. They all loved it.
Rose decided since it was Floki’s birthday I should open up the other two packages and give that to them too. I did and they gobbled that up as eagerly as the first two. Hopefully, next year I will get the date right.
If you want to read more about Floki’s early days, check out the links below.
I missed Chris’s birthday again. For some reason I keep thinking it is on the 18th but it is really the 14th. Anyway, we don’t know is real birthday but celebrate it six months before his Gotcha Day because he was about six months old when we adopted him from the cat shelter.
I thought today I would just re-share some pictures of Chris since his last birthday and later, before I go to work, will pass out kitty treats (Stella and Chewy’s) to celebrate.
Here is Chris last June stopping to smell the flowers
Here he is in July getting along with Frankie.
In August he had a rare opportunity to be outside at the same time as Frankie. I am sure this is because he escaped as I tried to get out with Frankie.
I bought a new computer in September and Chris got the box . . . that he wouldn’t share.
Also in September he had an eye infection and had to visit the vet for the first time ever, except for shots.
Here he is in October doing his famous “Happy Roll.”
In November he teamed up with Frankie to be bad.
More badness.
Even more badness. November must have been a bad month.
Some goodness in January with Floki.
February, not so good
Here he is in April getting cat hair on my underwear. Not that many people would notice.
Last, but not least, here he is on the day we adopted him, November 14, 2009.
Bad Cat Chris 