Chris just can’t go outside without first sampling some of the greenery.
Photo Friday: Grasseater
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Tag Archives: cat
Vacation is Over
We just returned from a week-long cruise on Saturday. We were supposed to go to the Virgin Islands but a hurricane forced us to different ports, but that is another story. By the time the cruise was over, we were more than ready to get home to see our boys.
We had no phone service for a week so we had to trust that our cats were being taken care of. Service returned Saturday morning when we arrived at Port Canaveral but we had no messages from the cat sitter. After we finally left the ship, Rose got a text from our backup cat sitter with a photo of each of the cats but no real explanation as to why she was there. At least we knew they were okay, that is all we cared about. We learned later that our cat-sitter had to go out of town that morning and just missed one visit.
When we got home Chris, Puck and Frankie were waiting for us at the door. It was like we had never left. They were happy to see us and wanted me to open a can of food for them right away. Even thought it wasn’t dinnertime, I couldn’t say no. I thought there was a small chance that at least one of them would be angry with us for leaving them but that didn’t happen.
Later I noticed that Chris had gained weight while we were gone. I have been concerned lately because he has plumped up a bit and I have tried to cut back on the dry food that I leave out. Chris does not eat enough of the wet food because he is addicted to the dry food. I have been slowly reducing his dry food in an attempt to reverse that problem, but my fear that something might happen to the cat-sitter promoted me to put out a gravity feeder in addition to their regular bowls.
Fat Cat Chris
Well, Chris seemed to take advantage of that. As I saw him lying on the floor like a beached whale, I petted his belly and said something about his weight gain. He didn’t like that. He growled and tried to bite me. I tried talking to him to calm him down but he kept growling at me so I just left him alone. Later he came and lied on my lap like nothing happened.
He also wasted no time in getting on the counter to beg for kitty treats and catnip. I guess everything is back to normal.
Photo Friday: The Corkscrew Kitty
We’ve seen Frankie sleeping like a pretzel. Now here is Puck doing his corkscrew impression. How is this comfortable?
Photo Friday: Catching Some Rays
Frankie loves the patio but in the afternoon, the living room is where you want to be if you want to lie in the sunbeam.
The Lizard Dilemma
The other day Chris was outside and caught another lizard. That is bad enough but he has this irresistible urge to bring his catch into the house and doesn’t know what to do with it when he can’t get in.
I’m not sure why he has to bring it inside. At first I thought it was instinctual but then I realized that lions don’t kill a gazelle and then drag it back to the den to eat it. Maybe he just wants to show it off to Puck and Frankie.
Photo Friday: I Wasn’t On The Refrigerator
I guess a bad cat’s got to do what a bad cat’s got to do.
Photo Friday: Sleeping With the Purses
I don’t know why but cats seem to have a fascination with lying on purses. So when Rose put several purses on a chair (temporally), Puck couldn’t resist napping on them.
Feral Cat Ear Notching
We know nothing about Frankie’s back story. We adopted him at Petsmart from The Pinellas County Animal Services. The person at Petsmart did not know anything about him so we just didn’t think much about it, although I did send a Facebook message to the animal services with his reference number but, even though they have an active Facebook page, I got no response.
I couldn’t help being perplexed, though, by the ear notch on his right ear. I have heard about ear notching before. It is the method of cutting a notch in a cat’s ear after spaying or Neutering. Sometimes it is called ear tipping when they remove about a centimeter off the tip of the ear.
Ear tipped cat
Ear notching or tipping is mostly done to feral cats involved in a Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) program. It identifies that they have been fixed so they are not trapped again and put under the knife a second time. I prefer the notch because it is less disfiguring but a ear-tipped cat is easier to identify from a distance. It is also more likely that a notch could be mistaken for an injury or vice versa.
The notch got me thinking. If he was a feral cat, why is he so friendly? Of course, not all notched cats are feral, some are strays, but if Frankie was caught as a stray with the intention of fixing him for adoption, why would they notch his ear? Perhaps it isn’t a notch. After all, it looks more like a slit than a triangular notch.
Frankie’s ear notch
I did a little research and found that ear tipping on the left ear is most common but there is no universal standard. Frankie’s quasi notch is on his right ear. That led me to believe it was more likely the result of a fight and didn’t think about it again until we visited my mother-in-law.
She has two cats. One of them is a gold cat named pumpkin that has the same slit on his right ear. Coincidence? Possibly. It is also possible that in this area, a small sliver of a notch in the right ear is how some vets do it.
Pumpkin
I tried to do a Google search to see what the standard is where I live on the west coast of Tampa Bay, Florida, but I found nothing concrete. I searched Petfinder for cats in my area and found four or five with a tipped ear but none with a notch. So the mystery remains. It doesn’t really matter where Frankie comes from and if I never find out, I won’t care. I just can’t help loving a good mystery.
Do you have a cat that has been notched or tipped? Do you know what is common where you live? I’d like to hear about it.
Patio Life
Here on the west coast of Florida, it gets pretty hot in the summer. It seems almost every afternoon the temperature is at or near 95 degrees Fahrenheit. There is also a high humidity in the summer that makes being outside during midday quite unpleasant. We try to limit our outdoor activities to the mornings or late afternoons.
Chris and Puck feel that way too. Often they use that time to nap on the sofa or, in Chris’s case, find a human to bother. Frankie is different. I often look out the window to see him napping on the patio during the hottest part of the afternoon. He must be part camel or something because he spends much of his day outside in the heat and does not seem to be bothered by it in the least. Perhaps he still retains some of the traits of his distant ancestor, the African Wildcat.
Photo Friday: Keyboard Troubles
As you may or may not know, Chris has taken over his Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts (although I think he is slacking on Google+). The problem is, he is still having trouble learning the correct way to use the keyboard and I always seem to have to come to the rescue and type for him. What is even more of a problem is that when I am typing for him he suddenly remembers how to tap on the keys. Is it too much to expect a cat to type his own posts?
Bad Cat Chris 