A couple of years ago I reviewed the Art of Paws Heated Pet Mat. The cats seemed to like the mat but living in Florida we really didn’t have enough cold days for it to be useful. I think shortly after I got it I removed the heating part of it and just used it as a cat pad. We had it on our coffee table and Floki used it quite often there.
We brought it with us to West Virginia along with the heating element. I used it as a pad to one of the cat crates during the trip here and it fit perfectly.
When we got here and realized how cold it was I reinserted the heating element and plugged it in. It was a big success.
All three cats took turns lying on it and often there were two cats at a time on it. I have no photos of Floki lying on the mat for some reason but I assure you he was just as interested at Chris and Frankie.
We will be heading back to Florida on Saturday and I plan on bringing the pad with us but I will leave the heating element here.
When we moved into our new home in West Virginia we met several people who were happy to talk about the house, the neighbors, and the town. I will write about the house soon but for now, I want to talk about stray cats. They are everywhere around us. Even so, I have yet to get a photograph of one because I usually see them from a distance or when I am not ready with a camera.
One guy talked about our next door neighbor feeding strays like it was a bad thing. One day, while I was bringing the trash to the alley, I counted four cats and a kitten in the back yard of the house behind us. As far as the neighbors next door, I have only occasionally seen a stray or two there but I was able to get a video of a confrontation between two cats. I first heard the howling sounds that cats make when meeting another cat that they don’t know. I then saw them out the bathroom window at the house next door. I expected a fight but it never happened.
My office is upstairs in the back of the house and I often will see a cat walk by, sometimes through our yard and sometimes next door or across the alley. Once, after it snowed, I saw cat tracks that came right up to our back door.
A couple of weeks after we moved in my wife somehow became Facebook friends with the woman who lives behind us. She said that a woman died at a nearby home who had 14 cats. When the son came to clean out her home he just dumped the cats outside. So, being a caring person, she felt compelled to take care of them. Strangely, we have yet to meet her in person. We bought two cases of wet food for her but when I brought them to her house, nobody was home. I also brought cookies over there for Christmas but only her son was home then.
There are other kind people too on the block. One neighbor said there are at least three people who care for cats but I don’t know if they all care for the same 14 cats or if there is more than one colony here. One man, we were told, leaves a heater on in his garage for the cats. If we were permanent residents I would not be opposed to leaving food out on the back porch and perhaps a shelter too but I wouldn’t want to get cats dependent on me and then leave.
I am glad to know there are many caring people in this neighborhood. I have always felt like most people are good but the bad ones seem to get the most recognition.
On another note. We are planning to head back to Florida this Saturday. This time we will have to cram the two cat crates in the back seat of my wife’s car, where they just barely fit. While it will be an easier trip than coming up here in the moving truck, I am concerned that the only way in or out for the crates is by putting the convertible top down. This could be a problem in an emergency. Let us pray there is no emergency.
I stopped working three of my four jobs before moving to our new home but I feel like I now have less time than ever. This post, for example, probably should have been written two weeks ago.
I don’t remember what prompted me to pick up Chris and put him on my shoulders like I did when he was young. Perhaps he “asked” me to pick him up by clawing at my leg. However it happened, he ended up on my shoulders just before I walked from the kitchen to the dining room. Along the way, I passed the China Cabinet. If anyone has been reading this blog long enough to have seen the post named Chris’s Springboard could probably guess what happened next.
Chris used me as a springboard and jumped to the top of the China Cabinet.
I was surprised Chris was able to get up there given his age and weight but he seemed to manage just fine. I’m not sure then why I have to pick him up when he wants to get on my lap.
Since it is “kitty see kitty do” in our house Frankie also had to get on my shoulders and then up onto the China cabinet.
Next up was Floki. He got on my shoulders but was too scared to make the leap onto the cabinet. He does have a reputation for being a bit of a scaredy cat and this did not help it.
Chris has slowed down these last couple of years but it is good to know he still has some of that youthful spirit in him.
Last week we took a drive to Parkersburg. It is about 45 minutes from home but if you need to do any serious shopping at a store that is not Walmart than that is where you need to go. I think we needed to go to Home Depot and Rose wanted to do some Christmas shopping at T.J. Maxx.
I bought Rose an Advent calendar a couple of years ago and gave her a gift for each day on the calendar, 24 in all. Now it has become a tradition so I need to come up with 24 gifts for her every December plus a birthday gift four days after Christmas. So I was happy to go to T.J. Maxx to look for gifts for her.
While I was looking I saw a cat bed there that looked pretty cozy. There was only one so I couldn’t get one for each of our cats but I wasn’t even sure if anyone would like it. They did.
Chris, of course, took it over.
Frankie and Floki did, eventually, get a turn.
After we moved in we let the cats sleep with us for several nights but Chris is far too annoying at night so now we have to close our door before we go to bed. I thought it would be nice if there were three cat beds outside our door so a few days ago I picked up two more while we were in Walmart. The new ones are a little bit smaller but Chris still manages to fit and he seems happy with them.
I have not yet seen all three cats enjoying the cat beds at the same time but I like to think that is where they are at night.
My wife ordered a mattress and bed frame for one of our bedrooms. The mattress arrived in time for guests but the bed frame was delayed. It arrived last week and I was tasked with putting it together. A normal bed frame can be put together in five minutes with another five or ten minutes to attach the headboard and footboard. Of course, my wife never buys anything that is easy to put together.
I opened the box and was just overwhelmed by all the pieces. I imagined a nuclear submarine had fewer parts. Fortunately, Frankie was there to offer assistance.
Frankie must have realized that this job needed more that one snoopervisor so he called in Floki.
Eventually, both of them got bored so Chris came in to take over.
When I was close to being done Frankie and Floki came back to check my progress.
By the time I was finished more than two hours after I started, I was alone.
A day or two later, a box arrived with a desk for Rose. She bought an antique desk a couple of weeks ago and decided she didn’t like that I had nothing to do so she ordered a desk with twice and many parts as the nuclear bedframe.
Again, Frankie was first to offer help but soon Floki was there to help too.
Then Chris came to supervise the supervisors.
This project took me almost four hours to complete. The boys tried to stay focused but five minutes at a time was all they could muster. To there credit, they would each come back and check on me from time to time.
I just don’t know why these things always need to be so complicated. I think the designers forgot the K.I.S.S. principal of design (keep it simple, stupid).
To add insult to injury, the next day a big box showed up at the door. I dragged it inside and saw it was a bedframe. I thought it was a mistake. The company must have made an error. But nope, Rose ordered it for a bed that already had a bedframe. You know, one of those five minute frames. It just needed a headboard and footboard and it didn’t even need that. Who cares if one of the two guest beds doesn’t have a headboard? You just don’t want guests to get too comfortable.
I guess after I recover from the last two assembly projects, I will put it together. At least I know I will have three little helpers to make it easier . . . or harder.
The day after we arrived at our new house in West Virginia, our friends, Julie and Tim, came with a dining room set that they got from us several years ago. When they moved from Florida to Virginia they no longer had room for it and had it in storage.
They arrived on a Saturday with their two dogs, Harley and Link. Harley is an older Shih Tzu and Link is a young Poodle mix that Julie found wandering on the side of the road.
For the three days they were here, the house was separated into a dog zone and a cat zone. The cat zone was upstairs and the dog zone was downstairs. The divider was the bottom of the stairs and very often there was a staredown between Frankie and Link.
The dogs were kept in the bedroom at night and several times during the day which allowed our cats to come downstairs to eat and visit with us. I’m sure after that long drive here they didn’t need the stress of dealing with dogs but cats are resilient and once the dogs were gone it was like nothing happened. They were out and running through the house without a care in the world.
We adopted Puck for my wife but he then tended to be more my cat. We then adopted Frankie for her and the same thing happened. Finally we adopted Floki for Rose and I was told not to be nice to him. Of course, I would never be mean to any cat but Floki has been Rose’s cat since he was a kitten. He comes to me for attention sometimes but he wants attention from Rose even more.
Since we moved to our new home, and I think even before that, Floki has been spending more time on my lap. This does not go over well with his mom, especially when she looks over and sees three cats on my lap.
Our cats were so happy when we got to the hotel yesterday. Well, okay, once Frankie and Floki decided to remove themselves from under the sofa, then they were happy.
We were happy too. Our trip was extremely unpleasant and way longer than Google predicted. I don’t want to do that ever again and yet, here we go for day two.
We went to bed relatively early last night, before 9:00, but because we were not able to shut the bedroom door, Chris spent the night bothering me. He bothered Rose too but his focus was on preventing me from sleeping.
I don’t know how many times I put Chris off the bed or pushed him to the foot of the bed where Frankie and Floki were quietly behaving. Each time he would stay away for some time between ten seconds and then minutes and then he would be back clawing, scratching, biting or lying on my head.
Not long after 3:00 a.m. Rose decided to get up because she couldn’t sleep. I was so tired I didn’t want to get up with her so she fed the cats hoping that would distract Chris. That worked for about two minutes and then he was back bothering me. After ten minutes I couldn’t take it any longer and put him off the bed ad tried to go back to sleep.
I then heard the sound of a cat digging in the litter box and my wife laughing. Of course I had to know what was so funny so she told me what Chris was doing so I had to turn to see for myself.
I should say that I bought a small, disposable litter box for the trip and then decided it was too small and bought a small non disposable litter box with a small bag of litter. Chris was in the bigger of the two boxes pushing all the litter out and the trying to scoop litter into the box from the smaller box.
Now that I am up Chris decided to take a nap next to me. Why couldn’t he do that last night.
Bad Cat Chris 