Tag Archives: Cats

Photo Friday: Enjoying the Outdoors

Our cats are stuck inside most of the time so I can’t blame them for trying to get out every time someone opens the door. Lately Frankie has been relentless. He stands by the door and cries or he runs to the door every time someone in the house gets up.

I try to put a harness on him at least once each weekend. When I do, Chris is right there ready to run out the door. I try to stop him but I often fail and he is outside with Frankie. That is what happened Saturday. I tried watching Chris while I had Frankie on the harness. It was easy at first because Frankie and Chris were both content with staying close to home while eating grass.

The problem started when Chris wandered to the back to see what Frankie was doing and then kept going to the neighbor’s driveway behind us. I then had to put Frankie inside the house and retrieve Chris. I then brought Chris inside and let Frankie back out again. It was a pain but Frankie was happy in the end.

Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day

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Today is Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day so I thought I would remember the pets that have come before.

This is our St. Bernard, Bruno, and I believe that is me in the chair. My parents gave Bruno away when I was very young. I remember being very sad when the station wagon drove away with him. Years later I was told they worried about having him around small children but, what they didn’t know, was that my sister and I would get on his back like a horse and he didn’t seem to mind. Although, being 2 years old, perhaps I wasn’t seeing it correctly.

Our next dog was a Basset Hound named Caesar. He was a great dog but he would howl during the day when nobody was home. One day, shortly after moving to a new house, the police showed up at our door because of a complaint from a neighbor. So we had to say goodbye to another pet. Cesar went to live with my grandparents. We also had another Basset Hound named Samantha. Her and Cesar escaped one day while we were not home. Cesar came back but Samantha did not.

Around 1976, a friend of my dad’s had a stray Doberman hanging around his neighborhood. They captured her and Dad brought her home. I’m not sure who named her Natasha but we just called her Tasha. She took to me right away and was with me for ten years before she died. She was the best dog ever.

This is not a good picture of her but it is the oldest. Check out the ancient microwave.

Tasha was all about the food as this next picture (from around 1982) shows in more than one way.

When I met my wife, Rose, in 1999, her son, Nick, had a cat named Sneakers. He got his name because he was found behind a bar called Sneakers. He loved Nick but he could be “bipolar” when it came to other people.

Vinny was a stray that came looking for food around Thanksgiving. It was unusually cold at that time so we decided to take him in. Except for Chris, Vinny was the friendlies cat ever. He was known for lying on the feet of strangers.

Princess was a feral kitten around 2002. Her mother disappeared, and a neighbor of my mother-in-law had all these kittens they were trying to home. My wife felt bad for for the kitten that was missing most of her tail, so we adopted her along with about a hundred fleas.

Abbey and Alex came to us in 2005. We adopted them from Petsmart. We chose Alex but couldn’t leave his sister Abbey behind. I’m glad we took both. Alex was very friendly and Abbey was shy but very affection to me.

Abbey

Alex

Tigger was adopted by my Mother-in-law in 2006 but the shelter wanted him back because his brother was too dependent on him. We tried to talk her into taking his brother but she was not ready for two cats at that time. We took them both instead.

Tigger was another very friendly cat. His brother, Flash, was the opposite. He wasn’t mean but he was very shy. He would come to me for attention, and surprisingly my mother too when she came to visit, but he was not very people friendly. When we first got them, Tigger would suck on Flash’s belly like he was nursing. After awhile, Flash put a stop to it.

Tigger and brother Flash

Princess, Tigger, Abbey and Flash, Jan 28, 2007

Clockwise from left: Abbey, Flash, Alex and Tigger

We miss all of them but at least we have happy memories.

Oh, I forgot to mention that this day was started by Deborah Barnes from The Chronicles of Zee and Zoey in memory her Mr. Jazz.

The Tolerant Kitty

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It seems Floki has found a playmate in Frankie. Sure, he will also play with Puck and Chris but Chris is easily annoyed by Floki and Puck… well, I’m not sure why Puck doesn’t play with him too much.

Frankie likes playing with Puck. I often see one chasing the other through the house and then the roles reverse until they are both down in a winner-take-all wrestling championship.

Recently I saw Floki playing with Frankie’s tail and Frankie did not seem annoyed by it at all. At least he wasn’t annoyed for a couple of minutes, but even the best of us have our limits.

Compare that to this video with Floki and Chris that you probably have seen already.

The Cycle of Sickness

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Our cats have been sick since we introduced Floki to the group. He didn’t show signs of being sick when we got him but I guess that is one lesson we learned the hard way.

I can’t blame Floki for everything though. There are two separate illnesses going around. One is an eye infection, which I think is Pink Eye. That is probably from Floki, but the other is sneezing, which Frankie had before we met Floki.

It started with Frankie getting an eye infection while Floki caught the sneezes. The eye trouble then spread to Puck who had it in both eyes but was spared the sneezing. Chris then had a slight case of the sniffles but he never got very sick.

Chris, dispute his weight, has never been very sick. In fact, unlike Puck and Frankie, he has never been given steroids or antibiotics, which all vets love to dish out like candy. I guess that is because Chris has never been to the vet for anything except vaccinations. Maybe that is why he doesn’t normally get sick.

Puck got better and is fine now. Frankie got a little better but then the eye infection and sneezing came back. Now it’s Chris turn. He is not only sneezing but he has the eye infection too.

Saturday, my wife was sitting on the bed with her laptop while Chris was lying next to her. Suddenly, Chris sneezed an abundance of snot her way. It got all over her and her laptop. All I heard was a lot of yelling and Rose running to the bathroom to take an “emergency” shower.

The most concerning thing happened Sunday morning. Frankie was on top of the refrigerator while I was in the kitchen doing chores. Rose came out and noticed one of Frankie’s eyes was very dilated. That was not normal and very concerning.

The first thought was to bring him to the vet but it was Sunday so that wasn’t an option. I did a little research and there are many different causes of that. We decided to give him a day to see if it got any better.

This morning it is slightly better, perhaps ten percent. Not much but it means there is hope. We will continue to monitor Frankie’s eye very closely and if it does not continue to improve, we will have to bring him to the vet.

Photo Friday: Sorry, the Lap is Full

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They say, “Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd,” and it seems to be true in our house. All it takes is one cat to get on my lap and then another cat wants to get on my lap and before you know it, there’s a party.

The Outdoor Adventures of Two Bad Cats

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Frankie was being very vocal on Saturday about wanting to go outside so I decided to take him for a walk. Rose took out the cat harness and leash and said things like “Oh boy Frankie, you’re gonna go outside!” That got him all riled up but I wasn’t ready yet. I still had to find my shoes and put them on, which surely was an excruciatingly long time for Frankie.

When I finally got his harness on and opened the door, Chris bolted out the door after Frankie. I expected him to try that but I was still unable to stop him. That made walking Frankie more difficult because now I had to keep an eye on Chris too. He won’t run away like Frankie does but Chris will wander off after a little while.

I tried keeping Frankie close to home so I could monitor Chris.

When he would walk too far away I had to pick him up, or pretend to try to pick him up, to get him going back toward home.

It wasn’t too long before Chris made it out to the front of the house, near the street. It is a relatively quiet street but I don’t trust all the old drivers around here.

Before long, Chris made his way to the neighbor’s driveway, which forced me to put Frankie in the house so I could retrieve Chris before he got himself into trouble.

The next morning Frankie was even more vocal about wanting to go outside. The back door is right next to the bathroom where Rose was getting ready and Frankie was really annoying her so Rose asked me to take Frankie out again.

This time, with Rose’s help, we made it outside without Chris.

Frankie spends about ten minutes in our back yard just eating grass, smelling the air, and looking around.

We eventually got moving and Frankie led me a long way from home. Along the way we stopped to admire a couple of doves in our path.

Frankie was probably thinking about an early lunch but they flew away.

After a half hour outside it was starting to feel hot so I “encouraged” Frankie to head toward home. After a while my encouragements weren’t working so I had to pick him up and carry him home.

When I open the door to put him inside, Chris ran out. It wasn’t fair for Chris to be stuck inside while Frankie was out so I let him stay outside while I watched him. Chris is funny because when you talk to him with a scolding voice, he rolls around to show you how cute he is.

“Chris! What are you doing!”

While I was watching Chris outside, Rose opened the door to ask me a question and Frankie ran out. Crap! I tried to catch him but failed and he ended up under my truck. I quickly put Chris in the house so I could concentrate on catching Frankie but he proved very elusive.

Eventually he ended up across the street under the neighbors car.

He knows I can’t get him under a car so I just sat on my porch in the hot sun and waited him out. Sometimes he would come out but stayed close so he could run back under the car if I got close.

I finally gave up and went inside for five minutes. When I came out, Frankie was gone. I searched for him for a few minutes and then went back inside. I thought I would sit in the air conditioning for a little while and watch out the window. That was when Rose spotted him on the street sitting in somebody’s Garden.

I went back outside to retrieve Frankie. This time he gave me no trouble, letting me pick him up and bring him home.

I think it’s good for our cats to get outside, but it always seems to be a pain in the butt as well.

Photo Friday: Togetherness

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I just love seeing Chris and Frankie getting along like this. I think they fight less since Floki has come along. I think he wears them both out.

Caption This: Treat Stealer

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Holly, my sister-in-laws’s cat, is like a female version of Chris, except she has a couple more years experience being bad.

How would you caption this? When you’ve thought of something, check out my answer on my other blog, JustFurLaughs.com

Happy World Cat Day

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Today is World Cat Day or International Cat Day. A day created to bring awareness to the special needs of cats, and some of them, I’m not mentioning Chris’s name. can be very needy.

Making Homemade Raw Cat Food: Batch Two

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When I made my first batch of raw cat food, I was afraid the cats wouldn’t like it, which is why I bought only a small amount of the premix from TCfeline. I needn’t have worried because they loved it. Granted, I started with only two ounces mixed with a 5.5 ounce can of cat food, but it was a better start than I expected.

I made a second batch last Sunday and decided to photograph the process because I forgot to do that last time. This time I decided to give them variety and used beef instead of chicken. The decision was also helped by the fact that I had a $5 off coupon for two pounds of beef at Whole Foods using their app.

I thought I would cut it into chunks instead of having it ground so I went home to do the work myself. Often, the way I envision things going are very different from the way things really go. This is one example.

Even though I am no chef, I am still embarrassed to say that I didn’t have a knife sharp enough to cut two pounds of beef. With much effort, I was able to cut this hunk of meat into slices but then gave up.

Instead, I pulled out my Ninja blender and stuck the pieces in there. I don’t think it was designed for grinding meat but it did a good job cutting it up and it worked quite fast too.

A meat grinder may have been more suited to the task but I noticed one advantage to this method. The Ninja didn’t do a very good job of cutting up the gristle which made it easy to pull those pieces out of the mixture.

I then put the beef into a large mixing bowl.

I added two egg yolks, but not the egg whites since they are bad for cats.

The instructions then call for a cup of water (I use spring water) and a quarter cup of the TCfeline premix, which I then added to the bowl.

All that was left was to mix it up.

Put it into containers.

And stick them in the freezer.

I still had some of the chicken mixture left and wanted to use that while I let the beef mix freeze for at least 24 hours (three days is ideal) as an added precaution against parasites.

I didn’t fill the containers as high this time. Part of the reason was to allow room for expansion when frozen. Another reason was because I wanted to increase the raw food to caned food ratio by using the entire container per meal instead of half the container. Before taking that step, I needed to make sure they liked the beef mixture, so I continued to give them only half.

The first feeding of the beef went well, at first, but when everyone was done eating there was still food left in the bowls. That told me they weren’t crazy about the beef but as the week progressed, the amount of food left over decreased. The last couple of days there have been no food left over so, it seems, they are happy with the beef now.

I have to make another batch today so I will probably go back to chicken, or maybe turkey, if they have it. I also have to buy more of the TCfeline premix. This time I will buy a bigger container. I will also have it ground at Whole Foods which will cut the prep time in half and make my work much easier. Who doesn’t like easier?

Bad Cat Chris

The Baddest Cat You'll Ever Love