Tag Archives: Cats

Big Baby Chris

The other day was nail clipping time. It is a joyous time that everyone in the house looks forward to…or not. Since I am a bit too nice for the task, my job is to bring the cats to Rose and help hold them down while she clips their nails.

Time to trim nails again (Photo credit: AlexanderY)

We started with Puck, who is never a problem when it comes to clipping his nails. I was not even needed to hold him. In fact, he was actually purring while Rose was clipping his nails. If only all cats would act that way.

Contrast that behavior with Chris’s. It is an absolute nightmare to get his nails clipped. He screams, cries, growls, bites, scratches and oh…did I mention farts? If someone didn’t know better they would think Rose was cutting off his toes or something. Why is he such a baby? It’s just nail clippings.

Last week he had a problem with his eye and we wanted to hold a warm, wet cloth on it for a short time. This was as painless as clipping his nails but he wanted nothing to do with it. It was difficult to keep the cloth on him for more than twenty seconds. I do not look forward to the day when we have to give him medicine, or worse, a shot.

We’ve had experience with several cats over the last decade and a half and only one, Princess, has given us as much trouble at nail clipping time as Chris has. I’m curious to know what other people go through at clipping time. Please leave a comment. Tell me I’m not alone.

…and the Bad Shall Lead

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When I met Rose, we both had an eight year old son living with us. My son, Chris, was somewhat easy-going and spent too much time indoors playing video games. (Just a side note: Bad Cat Chris was not named after my son. That is the name he had when we got him. See “What’s in a Name“) Rose’s son, Nick, was hyper-active and it was difficult to keep him in the house. When we all moved in together, we thought Nick would motivate Chris to go outside, but instead, Chris got Nick interested in video games. I don’t know if undesirable behavior is more influential or not, but in our household, that seems to be the case.

Take Puck for example. He came to us as a kitten and had surprisingly good behavior, but lately he seems to be picking up some of Chris’s habits. Recently he started jumping on my shoulders. I don’t consider this a bad behavior but I think he learned it from watching Chris. What he didn’t learn was how to stabilize himself. Chris is a natural and never seems off-balance but I have to move carefully when Puck is on my shoulders because I fear he will lose his balance and dig his claws into me, which has already happened a couple of times.

The other day he picked up another trick from Chris’s playbook and used me to get onto the refrigerator (See “Chris’s Springboard“) and from there to the top of the cabinets. Now he skips me and hops onto the counter, then the fridge and up to the cabinets, just like Chris. He hasn’t yet learned to jump from the fridge to the cabinets on the opposite side of the kitchen but that will probably be next.

Bad Cat Chris and Puck on top of the Cabinets

Now Puck is starting to bother us when we are sleeping. He is not bad yet but if he gets to be like Chris, I won’t feel guilt about shutting the door and keeping them all out at night.

Update: I created a motivational poster using the image above. Click here to see it.

When One Door Opens…Look for Chris

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People that think dogs are smarter than cats haven’t met Chris. Dogs may be more trainable but that is only because they are more dependent on humans. Chris on the other hand can’t be trained but he certainly can learn, and he has amazing deductive reasoning skills.

For example, we had a storage room under the stairs in the condo. The door to the closet was a standard door with a standard round door knob. One day Chris decided he wanted to investigate what was behind that door. He worked on it for a while pulling at the bottom to no avail.

Eventually he tried reaching for the doorknob, which he could barely reach. He would grab it with both paws for a split second and then drop to the ground and pull at the bottom of the door. Then he would repeat the routine. Eventually he was able to turn the knob and unlatch the door. It didn’t pop open until he performed the second half of his plan, which was pulling it at the bottom. Once he learned this trick, we couldn’t keep him out of the closet.

We also had the accordion type closet doors upstairs. He taught himself how to open those doors too. He would lay on the floor and pull the middle out untill it popped slightly open. He then would go to the open crack and pulled on it until he could get inside.

If I was a criminal I would bring him along to help crack safes.

The Great Upheaval

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Sixteen months after moving to Myrtle Beach, it was time to go back to Florida. Rose was asked to manage the property she left when she was an assistant manager. It was another promotion for her since the Florida property was more than double the size of the Myrtle Beach property. More importantly, we really wanted to go back to where we belonged.

Since Rose did not want to live on the property, we ended up renting a condo at the same complex that we used to own. We knew it was nice there and did not want any unpleasant surprises, since we couldn’t see the rentals first hand.

The big problem was that renting almost always means two pets. This place had a two pet rule in their bylaws. When we owned it was easier to sneak in a few extra cats, but as a renter, forget it. We decided we could get away with no more than three. That meant that two cats had to go. It was something I was not prepared to do and even tried to talk Rose into moving into one of her own apartments. At least I would have some pull with the landlord. Unfortunately, that did not work.

It was decided that Princess was an obvious choice because she didn’t like any of the other cats and absolutely despised Abbey. She would spend her days hiding under Rose’s dressing table and hiss and growl at Abbey when she came in the same room. Tony, the maintenance supervisor, took Princess for his little girls, who planned on spoiling her.

The next choice was difficult. Chris, we knew, could not be tolerated by anybody and would wind up back at the shelter so, in this case, being bad was good, for him anyway.

That left Tigger and the sister and brother, Abbey and Alex. It was not a matter of which one we cared about more, it was who we thought would be less affected by the separation. In this case, being good was bad. Alex turned out to be the better choice to stay behind because he wasn’t as needy. He also seemed to have become more of a loner as he aged. Don’t get me wrong, he was one of the friendliest cat I knew, he just was becoming less social with the other cats.

One of my last photos of Alex with Chris, of course, on top of him.

Alan, the maintenance technician, took Alex. It was nice to know our cats had someone to take care of them. I could not leave them in a cage at a shelter.

I brought Alex to Alan’s apartment a couple of days before we left and then went over a couple of times to visit him. He seemed happy there. I hated to leave him but that’s life sometimes.

I decided to plan the drive to Florida better than the drive to South Carolina. The first time we drove straight through and that was hard on the cats. This time I calculated the half-way point to be somewhere near the Florida border. I had checked hotels in Brunswick Georgia and Jacksonville Florida and found the ones near the expressway that took pets. This time we were going to leave later in the day and spend the night at a hotel.

Truck driver Rose with the cats.

On November 12, 2010, we spent all morning and part of the afternoon loading the rental truck. When that was done, we were left with the hard part, packing the cats. We had to put the cats between us on the front seat of the truck. In the large carrier, we put Tigger and Abbey because they get along well together. Chris went on top in the small carrier because we thought he would appreciate being able to look out the window.

The cats were pretty good for the most part and we made it to Jacksonville before stopping for the night. They were all happy to be out of their boxes, especially Chris, who had to investigate every nook and cranny of the hotel room.

The next day we drove the rest of the way to Dunedin. When we arrived we had two men come and help us unload the truck. That took many hours and the cats had to be shut up in the bathroom the entire time. I supposed after being in a truck all morning, it was a welcome respite.

Our new place had two levels and Chris shot up and down the stairs like an old pro. He would sometimes skip two or three stairs as he bounded down, usually hitting the ground floor and sliding into the bathroom door. Abbey, however, would come down very carefully, first the two front feet then the two rear feet, one step at a time.

Our new home with screen-less patio.

The biggest problem with our new home was that our patio was not screened nor could it be, so the cats had to stay inside. The other cats didn’t mind but poor Chris was like a bird with no wings.