Tag Archives: cat

Watching the Lawn Guy and New Bird Feeder

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A few minutes ago, I heard a loud noise from outside and soon realized it was the lawn guy. He must have hit something solid with his weed whacker. I looked onto the catio to see if Frankie wanted to come inside but instead, he was more interested in watching the lawn guy. He did, of course, turn to look at me when I opened the door to take his picture.

You may notice from the photo that we added another bird feeder. That is another story. Those Nanday Conures I had mentioned in a previous post had been visiting our neighbor and Rose wanted them to visit our house but we were using the wrong bird seed because of a previous issue with a rat. Since we hadn’t seen the rat, we thought we would throw caution to the wind and try to lure the birds to our house.

I ordered seed from Amazon but the bird feeder from Home Depot. It arrived without the plexiglass sides, so it had no way to hold the seeds. To speed things along, I went to our local Home Depot, which does not sell bird feeders, and bough a sheet of plexiglass which I cut to size. I then learned that the seed I ordered had been delayed so I went to Pet Supermarket the next day and bought conure seed.

At some point in the middle of all this I ran into my neighbor who mentioned that the Nandays stopped coming to his feeder. I don’t think they are migratory birds but what are the odds they stop coming around at the very moment I am putting something together to attract them.

Anyway, the new feeder has been up since Tuesday, but no new birds have shown up yet.

Our Manipulative Cat

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Frankie has known for a long time how to get me to do what he wants me to do. He goes to Rose.

Usually, it is about food. I will look at his bowl and see there is still wet food in it. He will look at his bowl and see the same food he ate an hour ago. This time, though, it wasn’t about food.

I usually take him for a walk between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning. Yesterday I was working on editing my latest book and let the time get away from me. At around 8:04, he went into the bedroom where Rose was getting ready. He hopped onto the bed and meowed at her several times.

She got up and said, “What? What is it?”

Frankie jumped off the bed and when he reached the door turned to see if Rose was following. She was so he led her through the house to where I was sitting.

What bothers me is he didn’t come to me first. He went right over my head to the top.

Photo Friday: Frankie Meets Dog

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On our walk Monday, we were on the next street over when a dog came down a driveway and onto the road without a leash. His human was a few steps behind.

The dog walked right up to Frankie and the two sniffed each other’s face. The woman warned her dog, “Be careful. He’s gonna whack you.”

Surprisingly, Frankie didn’t whack the dog. He stood patiently while the dog circled him, smelling his backside. He then returned to be face to face with Franke. That’s when Frankie whacked him. It wasn’t a fighting kind of whack. it was more of a “get out of my face” kind of whack.

“I told you,” the woman said.

Photo Friday: I smell a Cat

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Frankie took his time yesterday smelling this storm drain.

I assume it is because there is a feral cat that seems to regularly use the stormwater sewers as a way to get around without being seen. A larger storm drain closer to our house has a metal grate over it and I have seen the cat through the grate on our walks at least twice, maybe more.

My Newest Book, Last Breath

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I recently published Last Breath, which is the sixth in my Last Healer Mysteries series. If you want to read about where the idea came from, check out my blog post here.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the victim in the story had a cat which Katie and Joe adopt. The cat becomes a minor subplot as it wakes Joe up early every morning. He also adds a little bit a humor to the story as in this snippet:

After Katie hung up, she sat on the sofa with Joey and started reading him a children’s story. Max lay on top of the sofa, casually watching them, but the smell of bacon and eggs drew him to the kitchen, where Joe was cooking breakfast. He rubbed his face on Joe’s leg, then sat, looked up, and meowed.

“I fed you already,” Joe said.

Max meowed again at Joe.

Joe sighed. “This is not going to be a habit.” He picked up a piece of bacon that he had already cooked, blew on it to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then put it on a small plate. He put the plate on the floor next to Max and whispered, “Katie doesn’t need to know about this.”

Max sniffed the bacon and picked it up. He then ran into the living room with it. Joe put his hands on his head, both in surprise and dread.

“Joe!” thundered Katie’s voice from the living room a few seconds later. “The cat is eating bacon on our clean floor!”

As always, I need reviews, so I hope you consider checking out my books and reading one that sounds like it might interest you. Now I need to get on with writing Chris’s memoir.

Back From Vacation

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We returned late yesterday afternoon from our trip to Nova Scotia. While we had a wonderful time, we both were eager to get home to our cats.

Our cats were happy too, especially Frankie who wanted nothing but attention most of the evening.

Our next-door neighbor, Mom of the other Frankie, was nice enough to take care of our boys while we were away. We thought they might have gotten used to a later breakfast and wouldn’t bother us early in the morning, but we were wrong. Frankie woke me up at around 3:15 but I did not give in to him and went back to sleep. By 5:30 he couldn’t hold back any longer and insisted I get up and feed him. Oh well. It’s still good to be home.