Chris is not the only lizard catcher in the family. Frankie, while not as good as Chris, did manage to snag a lizard on Saturday.
He carried the lizard around for a minute and then set him down so he could have fun catching him again. Unfortunately for Frankie, the lizard was faster the second time.
By the way, that is not blood on Frankie’s paw. It’s some kind of plant matter that he picked up with the lizard, like the leaf hanging from his mouth.
Here is Chris the Lizard Hunter nine years ago yesterday.
Chris was a master lizard catcher in his prime.
On a recent walk, Frankie decided to climb not one but two trees.
Taking the second photo was not very smart on my part because Frankie was getting ready to ascend this tree. I stopped him just in time but if I had not I might have needed to call the fire department to get him down.
You may remember another tree climber in the family.
That was Chris during his tree-climbing days. Who else has climbers in their house?
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Frankie and I came across a snake on our walk the other day. Frankie didn’t notice it until it was slithering away. The next day, we saw another snake. This time Frankie noticed it about the same time I did. Unlike the last snake we saw, this one stood its ground. It just stared at us while we stared back at it.
It seemed like Frankie was preparing to attack so I picked him up and put him back down about twenty feet away. That was the end of that.
For a cat, Frankie seems to miss a lot of things that you would think cats would notice. I mentioned in another post how he missed seeing a stray cat, more than once. I saw the cat and the cat saw us but Frankie was oblivious. It happened again the other day.
We walked past the house that is behind us and one over, which is a corner lot. Frankie was busy sniffing plants and didn’t notice the cat watching us from a screened patio.
There were people inside the patio so I dared not try to get a better photograph.
We continued walking for a block but a dog barking and people talking loudly caused Frankie to reverse direction. We passed the house again with the cat, still unnoticed by Frankie, then walked behind the house toward our house. The cat moved to the back door and continued to watch us. This time we were quite close but Frankie never looked left.
Frankie wasn’t ready to go home so we continued on toward the pool area. Halfway there we came upon a snake. I saw it first. Frankie saw it too but not until several seconds later when the snake decided to retreat.
In Frankie’s defense, he is not completely oblivious to the world around him. He does seem to have an uncanny ability to notice squirrels. He also caught a rabbit once after he escaped. Besides other cats, he’s not very good with reptiles. Frankie could never compete with Chris when it comes to lizard-catching ability. Chris is also the snake catcher in the family.
I usually take Frankie for a walk on the weekends and he knows when it is the weekend because I am home longer that usual. Two weeks ago, my work went out of business so, until I find another job, I am home everyday. This means everyday is the weekend as far as Frankie is concerned and he won’t let me be lazy. Here he is demanding to be taken out for a walk.
Of our three cats, Floki is the biggest player. At almost seven years old he still runs around the house with toy mice and loves his turbo scratcher. He has become very good at spinning the ball around the track. The video below shows some of the skills he has in keeping the ball in motion but it is nothing compared to what I had seen when there were no cameras around.
I get notifications from Google and Microsoft highlighting photos from this day. Today I saw this one that I didn’t remember from 2015.
I then noticed a video from the same time. I checked YouTube to see if I had posted it there. I did.
I also noticed another video from earlier that month that was still marked as a draft. It was a video of Frankie’s first time on a leash and harness. I don’t know why that video was older than the one above. Perhaps I had too much trouble with that harness so I decided to continue to let Frankie out without a leash. I did put it on upside down that time and didn’t notice until we were outside.
After these videos, Frankie proved too much of a wild spirit and would take off far beyond the backyard. Because we lived close to a main road, I had to start using a harness every time he went outside.
I usually get up early and work on my business before going to work. Sundays I can just sit up in bed and relax. It’s also a good time for Frankie to relax as only Frankie can.
Our neighborhood is having a community yard sale today. We wanted to get rid of stuff and planned to participate but after a long, hard day of work yesterday I told Rose I just wanted to relax and skip the yard sale. I said we could just donate everything and Rose agreed.
Early this morning I was awakened by a loud noise. It sounded like someone was dragging something heavy across the floor. A few minutes later Rose woke me up and said, “I changed my mind, we have too much (stuff) that we need to get rid of. We need to move our cars before all the spots are gone.” I looked at the clock. It was 5 a.m. Ugh!
I hurt my back a few days ago so moving everything outside was a bit of a struggle. Once everything was outside and my chores were done I decided to take Frankie for a walk. We left the house at 6:40, which is probably the earliest we ever went for a walk.
We were out for almost a half hour and ended up about a block from home. I didn’t want to go further because I almost always have to carry him home. So I picked him up and headed home. It was a struggle because not only was my back hurting, I developed a pain in my leg because of the way I was walking with my back pain. It was a struggle getting home and it didn’t help that Frankie was struggling and hissing for half the walk.
We are now sitting outside and Frankie is keeping watch at the window.
Bad Cat Chris 