Here is Floki and Chris Tuesday evening. As usual, Chris is using another cat as a pillow.

Here is Floki and Chris Tuesday evening. As usual, Chris is using another cat as a pillow.

I’ve had a few regrets in my life but only one egret. This one hung around our house for a couple of years. I think the people that lived there before us might have fed him. We rarely gave him anything but he, or she, kept coming around.

The above photo was taken nine years ago yesterday. It is Puck and Frankie both wishing they could go outside. Chris was there too.

I feel bad for Chris sometimes when I watch him get down from a height that wouldn’t normally be a problem for a cat. His excess weight and arthritis means when he jumps down from the sofa or something at a similar height, he tends to stumble after hitting the ground.
A little while ago I watched him climb up to one of the cat perches. He first jumped up onto his crate, moved over to the tall cat perch, climbed up the “steps” and then over to the Z shaped perch and finally to the where he is in the photo below.

It looked like Chris wanted to jump to the floor, which would surely have hurt him if he tried, so I pushed a shorter cat perch next to him and then put a pillow on the ground to hopefully keep him from hurting himself on the way down.
Of course, now he’s changed places with Floki and will probably come down the way he went up.

We got our Art of Paws Heated Pet Mat six years ago. Since then, we have been using it without the heating element most of the time. I put the heating element back in when it gets cold, which isn’t very often in Florida but it did come in handy when we were in West Virginia. It hasn’t been particularly cold here lately, but we have woken up to temperatures in the forties a few days these last couple of weeks.
My wife was using a heating pad last Mondy. She set it on the bed and Floki discovered it.

Upon seeing this, my wife politely ordered me to put the heating element back into the cats’ heated mat. I did so and it was an instant hit.



I don’t have a photo of Frankie on the mat, but I am certain I have seen him on it.
Does anyone else have a heated mat or pet bed? If so, how popular is it?
I took Floki to the vet on Friday to get his nails trimmed because he absolutely will not let us cut them but he is a good boy at the vet. While in the waiting room, Freddy, the resident cat, came out to say hello.

It was a very civil meeting. Nobody growled or hissed. While Floki was with the vet tech, Freddy stayed with me and showed me how good of a biter he is.
The other day we Frankie and I came across a mother cat and her two kittens. All three cats were nervous and retreated when Frankie came near. More likely it was me they were afraid of. I see that a lot in cats that we come across. Yesterday was different.
Yesterday we met a domesticated male, black cat who came toward us instead of running away.

I didn’t know what to expect from either cat.
There was some hissing coming from the black cat, who was probably protecting his territory, so I decided to pick up Frankie and get him out of there.
My wife got a package yesterday and put the box down for the cats. Of course, Chris had to get in it but what happened next was unexpected.

I saw this the other day and had to get a photo.

A little while later I saw this.

We are so lucky our cats get along like this, but I fear when Chris is gone, we won’t see this type of closeness anymore.
My wife got a great photo of the cats on Wednesday morning. Check out Chris as the caboose.

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous new year. Hopefully 2024 won’t go off the rails.
