As most of you know, we keep the cats out of our bedroom at night because Chris is far too annoying. Lately, Floki has been crying outside of our bedroom door every morning starting at around 4:15. Chris decided that what Floki was doing was not annoying us enough, so he took over. Now, every morning starting at 4 a.m. Chris is out there scratching on the door. He is relentless, too. Sunday morning I thought I could wait him out. I thought he would give up after fifteen minutes. Instead, fourty-five minutes later, I was the one who gave up.

I gave them all wet food and went back to bed. My wife asked, “Did you give them dry food, too?”

“No,” I said. “If I put dry food down, Chris won’t eat the wet food.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but he will surely be back scratching on the door in five minutes.”

I don’t know how many minutes passed, but he was scratching on the door a short time later so I had to get up and put dry food in his bowls.

That day I went to Target and bought a child gate and put it so Chris could not get down the hallway to our bedroom door. It worked but I returned it today because my wife often gets up in the middle of the night and I feared she would trip over it in the dark.

The other bad thing he has started doing is dragging his water bowl across the floor, spilling its contents along the way.

This one is a head scratcher. I had a tall bowl there before but he started tipping it over. Now that I have a shorter bowl, dragging it across the floor is his alternative. He has done this several times now, including ten minutes ago, which reminded me to write about it.

I am at a loss for what to do about both of these new issues.