I think cats are genetically programmed to climb inside boxes. Everyone has seen it. Nevertheless, it is still cute so I thought I would share a couple of pictures of Chris recently. This box had some paper on the bottom which made it especially appealing.
We had a great Christmas. We spent it at home with family and friends. Rose’s son, Nick, was here from Massachusetts and my son, Chris, was also here. He lives nearby but because of conflicting work schedules we don’t see each other very often. Chris, as some of you know, was not named after my son but came to us with the name.
Unfortunately Puck, who is not a fan of strangers, spent the day under the bed. Chris celebrated the holiday by greeting everyone who came into the house and by enjoying some outside time.
It started just like our last party with Chris on top of the table we set up for refreshments.
When people started to arrive I decided to let Chris outside while I watched him from the patio.
I left the door open so he could come back inside. I really didn’t expect him to do that but after a while of watching him I got distracted and forgot he was outside. When I remembered I started outside to look for him when I saw him lying inside the patio (sorry, no picture of that).
After he went out the first time and after the customary grass-eating ritual, Chris went looking for trouble.
Chris has become less of an adventurer and tends to stay closer to the house now. That is a good thing but I still have to watch him because he will sometimes wander to the side of the property and crawl under the fence if I don’t stop him. This day he was happy to lie just outside the patio and roll around.
After he was tired of playing outside he came in and went from lap to lap, making sure nobody was left out. Here he is with my son.
Chris and Chris
I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas as much as Chris and I enjoyed ours.
No time to write this morning so I thought I’d post a photo of our cat Puck being nosey.
Oh boy! It smells like chicken.
Since we have had Chris, there has been countless times when he has managed to get himself shut inside a closet. He just can’t resist an open closet door, even if it is open for just a few seconds. Usually we see him go in but not always. To make matters worse, he always manages to climb up into the darkest recesses of the closet. Now, when we leave the house, we do a cat count.
Hey! You didn’t count to ten! (Without the flash, he is hard to see up there.)
Chris bothers Rose every morning while she is in the bathroom getting ready for work. That is one routine that I have already talked about on this blog. The truth is, Chris can be a creature of habit and his behavior can be quite predictable throughout the day.
For example, almost every day when I get out of the shower I can count on Chris to be there waiting for me. I don’t even get a chance to dry myself before he is trying to climb on my shoulders. Once he is up there it is very difficult to comb my hair, shave and brush my teeth. His cue to get off is when I brush my teeth and lean over to rinse my mouth.
He is also right there looking out the window by the front door when we get home from work. When I open the door I can count on him to try to run outside. He has learned some cleaver maneuvers and is getting by me more often now.
What I really find interesting is a habit that Rose noticed recently. When we sit down to watch TV, Rose puts a pillow on her lap and Chris lies on the pillow, but before he does that, he walks over her lap to me, kneads on my stomach for ten seconds and then walks back and lies on the pillow.
He does this every time. I never noticed it before. Perhaps he comes to me as if to say, “hey, I like you too so don’t get jealous.” Maybe he is just obsessive compulsive. I don’t know.
Does anyone else have a cat with a cute or funny routine? I’d love to hear about it.
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As most of you know, one of our biggest problems with having a bad cat is that he keeps us from getting a good night’s sleep. In our last three homes, there was always some impediment that kept us from locking him out of the bedroom at night, but since we have lived in our new home, we are finally able to close the door and get some sleep.
What’s different this time? Tile floors. Yep… Sweet, glorious tile, made in Heaven and placed on our floors by divine intervention, or by a flooring contractor, I’m not sure. The point is, it is the answer to our prayers. Well, technically, I didn’t pray for tile floors, but I would have if I would have thought it would work.
I didn’t notice until I saw this picture that Chris pulled a paint chip off the bottom of the door.
Now we can close our bedroom door and Chris can’t dig a hole in the tile like he could in the carpet. Of course, nothing is ever that easy with Chris. Our door has the lever type door knob that I described in my post, The Annoyance Strategy. This allowed Chris to pull the handle down and release it, making a loud noise. He would do this over and over until someone got up and opened the door.
Last time we had to change the door knob because locking it still allowed the handle to move up and down. This time the handle will not move when it is locked so as long as we remember to lock it, sleep is almost assured.
The amount of sleep we get is still not enough but I will take almost enough over what we were getting. Chris now stands outside the door at 5 a.m. and cries and scratches at the door until someone opens it. In another post I called him “Four O’clock Chris” because that is what time he would wake us up every morning. Now it is five o’clock. I’m not sure if he has improved or if he just does not recognize daylight savings time. In any case, I just wish I was home every day so I could wake him up promptly at 3:00 p.m.
I hadn’t fully noticed it before but I tend to be the main point of interest when Chris is in the mood for attention. This does not include the morning ritual of bothering Rose while she puts her make-up on.
Rose worked only a few hours on Friday morning and then met her father and his wife who drove here from the east coast. Because they are over three hours away, they only make the trip here once or twice a year. We see them a few more times when we drive there but for Chris and Puck, they are virtual strangers.
Chris, as regular readers know, has no concept of stranger danger. As soon as her father came in the house, Chris was all over him. He was even on his shoulders like he found a replacement for me after only five hours. Rose told me about it on the phone and I wanted to get a picture when I got home so I could show you all but it was not to be. As soon as I got home he forgot about my father-in-law and jumped on my shoulders.
This afternoon I left for an hour and a half bike ride. While I was gone, Rose tried to get some work done for her job but Chris wouldn’t let her. He kept lying on her papers and knocking things off the desk. She would then get frustrated with him and put him down. Chris would respond to that with some curt meows and then proceed to bite her legs.
When I returned from my ride, Rose said he was in much distress after I left and then he wouldn’t stop bothering her. Again, I wanted a picture of that but by then he was no longer interested in Rose. In my absence, she was a surrogate receptor for his bad behavior.
Now that I am home and trying to write a blog post, Chris is here with me treading, biting and stepping on the keyboard. It is his way of saying, “Welcome home, I missed you.”
Chris was being extra needy this morning and since I had my camera nearby, I thought I would video him for you. Enjoy.
Chris is making it hard for me to brush my teeth.
Lately, it seems like everywhere I go, there is a cat wanting to get on my shoulders. If I go into the kitchen or bathroom, Chris is right there on the counter next to me. Sometimes he just jumps up and sometimes he stands on his hind legs with his paws on my shoulders and cries for me to help him up. I then have to crouch down, put my arm around his legs and stand back up again.
For some reason, he especially likes to be up there while I am brushing my teeth. That is not good for him because as soon as I am done and have to rinse, he is S.O.L.
He also has developed a certain pattern where he will climb on my shoulders from my right and then have to turn around because he likes to lie with his head on my right. At first I thought he had OCD but then I realized that my wife and I sleep on the same side of the bed every night so I guess it’s common.
Chris has climbed on my shoulders since the day we met but lately it seems more like he has a special need to do it. I suppose it is only temporary though. Next month, I am sure, he will have a new, weird thing that he will be doing.
If anyone has a cat that does this, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear about it.
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I woke up this morning just before 2 a.m. because I had a very bad headache. I got up and went into the bathroom to get a couple of aspirin. I thought we had some in the medicine cabinet but it seemed we were out and I didn’t want to wake up Rose to ask her where they were so I checked everywhere I could think of inside the bathroom.
While I was doing that, Puck ran by the bathroom door with Chris hot on his tail. He then ran by again while Chris continued to give chase. Soon he ran into the bathroom and stopped under Rose’s make-up chair, right next to the bathtub. I could see he had something hanging from his mouth. It looked like a lizard but it seemed pale and had no tail.
Puck stood there with Chris by his side. He was making a strange noise that sounded like a growl, cry and purr all at once. As I looked closer I saw that it was a lizard hanging from his mouth but it wasn’t moving so I assumed it was already dead.
Just then Puck dropped it and it took off running. It got about six inches when Puck put his paw on it and stopped its forward momentum. It got away again and started scrambling up the wall when Chris stepped in and put his paw on the lizard and knocked him back to the floor. When it hit the floor, puck pounced on it and picked it up again and left the bathroom with Chris in pursuit. I heard the cat-door flap swing open twice, indicating both cats were now out on the patio. That was the end of that.
It occurred to me that for that thirty seconds my headache seemed to disappear. It quickly came back with a vengeance. I eventually found the aspirin but after taking it I found I could not lie down because my head hurt worse while I was in that position. I ended up sitting up in the living room for two hours waiting for my headache to go away. I think maybe Chris sensed I was not feeling well because he stopped his lizard hunting and stayed with me for most of that time. As bad as he is, there are times when he can be a good cat.
Bad Cat Chris 