I just finished putting together a compilation of some of my favorite Bad Cat Chris videos. I hope you enjoy, and please check out Chris’s YouTube channel and subscribe to be the first to see the latest videos from this crazy household.
Chris is one of those cats that continued to play like a kitten well into adulthood. Lately, however, the kitten in him did not come out very often. That changed the other day when Rose found a mouse under the refrigerator. It was a small mouse that I had never seen before. It must have found its way under the fridge shortly after coming out of the package.
I don’t know what is different about this mouse than all his other mice but he plays with it like he is a kitten again, and after several days, he has not become bored with it. I still see him chasing that thing around several times a day. It’s nice to know my lovable “bad cat” has not fully grown up yet.
I decided that for one day this would not be a pet blog because today my son, Christopher Huss, turned 25 years old.
Me with Chris – Christmas, 1991
When we got Chris the cat, we decided to change his name because one Chris was enough, but after realizing that they both had the same stubbornness, we decided the name Chris fit him well.
We had a great Christmas. We spent it at home with family and friends. Rose’s son, Nick, was here from Massachusetts and my son, Chris, was also here. He lives nearby but because of conflicting work schedules we don’t see each other very often. Chris, as some of you know, was not named after my son but came to us with the name.
Unfortunately Puck, who is not a fan of strangers, spent the day under the bed. Chris celebrated the holiday by greeting everyone who came into the house and by enjoying some outside time.
It started just like our last party with Chris on top of the table we set up for refreshments.
When people started to arrive I decided to let Chris outside while I watched him from the patio.
I left the door open so he could come back inside. I really didn’t expect him to do that but after a while of watching him I got distracted and forgot he was outside. When I remembered I started outside to look for him when I saw him lying inside the patio (sorry, no picture of that).
After he went out the first time and after the customary grass-eating ritual, Chris went looking for trouble.
Chris has become less of an adventurer and tends to stay closer to the house now. That is a good thing but I still have to watch him because he will sometimes wander to the side of the property and crawl under the fence if I don’t stop him. This day he was happy to lie just outside the patio and roll around.
After he was tired of playing outside he came in and went from lap to lap, making sure nobody was left out. Here he is with my son.
Chris and Chris
I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas as much as Chris and I enjoyed ours.
Lately, every once in a while, I will hear the sound of a cat in distress. The first time I heard it I thought one of our cats was hurt or stuck somewhere. When I looked for the source, I found Tigger locked in a stare-down with Chris. He had Chris cornered on the top landing of the staircase and surprisingly, was the aggressor in this confrontation.
When I showed up, the distraction gave Chris an exit opportunity and he took it. He bounded down the stairs with Tigger hot on his tail (literally). When they reached the living room, Tigger jumped on Chris and attacked him. I tried to separate them but it was only temporary. Tigger chased him down and attacked him again. Usually once a cat retreats the fight is over but not this time.
It was shocking because Tigger has always been such a nice cat. I know the old saying is true; what goes around, comes around, and Chris definitely was due for something to “come around,” but this was not the play fighting that Chris had annoyed the other cats with for three years. This was an attack by a pissed off cat, and it has repeated several times over the past couple of weeks.
In between the attacks I see the two of them laying together and even washing each other, so I don’t think Tigger has developed a hatred for Chris. I can only assume that he has become grumpy in his old age and Chris is doing something to annoy him (big surprise there), but I have not seen what starts the fights yet so I will have to watch them more closely. Hopefully I won’t have to bring Tigger in for anger management.
If you are a regular reader, you know that sleeping with Chris in the house can be very difficult. It has been a constant tug-o-war with each side having the advantage until the other side figures out a way to counter it. If you are a new reader, I will put links to some earlier stories about this struggle at the end of this post.
Currently, Chris has not only gained the advantage, but I have run out of ideas to get back to a normal night’s sleep. I feel like my sleep bank is overdrawn and if I don’t make a deposit soon I will get sick and perhaps even fired because I feel tired at work all the time. So far, it hasn’t affected my job, but I know mistakes happen when you are over-tired.
On Christmas Eve I couldn’t keep my eyes open in church. Our pastor is a nice guy and I don’t want him to think that I think he is boring. I was also having trouble keeping my eyes open on Christmas Day when my son and his wife were here. I was actually closing my eyes while he was talking to me. I had to struggle to keep them open.
After finally figuring out how to keep Chris out of the bedroom, I had to abandon it, first because Abbey got sick and then because of our new kitten Puck. For a kitten, he is remarkably well-behaved. Of course he plays and does some things he is not supposed to but he never bothers us at night. He also doesn’t scratch on the furniture or force his way into the cabinets or poop on the floor like a certain gold cat that we know. Because of this, Rose feels bad because to keep Chris out of the bedroom, we also have to keep out Puck and Tigger.
So, for now, he has full access to our bedroom at night, and every morning at four o’clock, he wakes me up. It is a mystery to me how he knows when it is four o’clock but somehow he does. He will get up next to me and either bite my nose or start treading on my bare skin. When this starts, I look at the clock and almost without fail, it is within five minutes of four o’clock.
Last night Rose clipped his nails. I thought that might help me tolerate the treading until he got tired and stopped. That didn’t work. I think having short nails just makes him extend them out farther. I try desperately to block his claws with my hands or the sheet but he just moves to another location. I grab his paws but he pulls away. I push him off the bed but he jumps back on it. I hold him down until I annoy him but he just moves to above my head where I can’t do that.
Sometimes I am succesful in keeping him from treading on my neck or back. When that happens, he pulls at my scalp. Sometimes he grabs my nose or the side of my lips with his claws and pulls. He is trying to get me to turn my head so he can bite my nose. I do not know why he must bite my nose but I do know it is very annoying. Out of frustration, I will sometimes bite his nose, hoping he will get the hint, but he doesn’t.
I think soon I will have to start going to bed at eight o’clock. My senior years are starting early.
Related articles: Who Needs Sleep?, Bad Cat Chris Versus Spray Bottle, Another Big Move, Chris’s Door, The Annoyance Strategy
When I started this blog over six months ago, I said I would tell his story from the beginning. I knew eventually I would catch up to the present and that time has come. I am sure I missed some stories along the way and if I remember them I will relate them to you, but for now, I will tell of Chris’s misadventures as they happen.
I have thought about what I want to do in the future. I have two ideas that I could perhaps tie together.
First, I have thought for some time about starting an animal welfare organization. The thought came to me around the end of 2008, give or take six months. It hit me after I heard about one of the stray cats that my sister-in-law, Felice, takes care of. Someone apparently poisoned this cat and she had to spend $500 of her own money to save its life. She is not wealthy but spends money to feed, fix and keep these animals healthy. I thought, if we could start a non-profit organization, than some of that burden could be helped by donations. Even if we got no donations, except for our own money that we put into it, at least it would be tax-deductible.
The start-up cost was an issue at first and then I moved to South Carolina. When I moved back in 2010 I was unemployed for three months and then under employed for another six months. Eventually, by the beginning of the year I had the $400 I thought I would need to start the organization. I even filled out the form at LegalZoom but something prompted me to investigate the IRS requirements. I had done so earlier but missed the fact that they charge a $400 application fee for tax-exempt status. This put the idea on hold until that $400 was spent on something else. I am still considering it, if Felice is still interested, and perhaps I will actually do something in a couple of months.
My second thought was to write an e-book about Bad Cat Chris. I have already written his story, I just need to merge some of the articles and expand upon some others. If I can put it together in a cohesive way and spend the time necessary to make it a quality story (not that it isn’t already), I think I could sell a few books.
I would put it on Kindle first and perhaps sell it for around $2.99. At that price I would get a 70% royalty ( kindle gives 70% for books priced 2.99 to 9.99 and 30% for all others). If I use the royalties, at least at first, Â to fund my first idea, maybe each would help the other.
Right now there is not enough people who know about Bad Cat Chris for any real success, but I am working to get the word out. Any help from my readers would be much appreciated. Any advice you can share would also be appreciated. You can also help by “liking” Chris on his facebook page (facebook.com/badcatchris) or following him on Twitter (twitter.com/BadCatChris).
Now since that is out of the way, let’s talk about Chris. He jumped up on the curio cabinet again. I first talked about this in the story Chris Takes the High Ground. I am so worried that the force of his jump will cause the cabinet to rock and fall over. If that happens the damage would be great but my biggest worry is that he could be crushed by it.
I also uploaded a new video to YouTube.
This was taken with my phone so the quality is less than perfect but it is worth watching. I uploaded this to my old channel youtube.com/animallaughs instead of Chris’s channel youtube.com/badcatchris because Chris is not the main part of the video.
I may get a video camera for Christmas (if I stay off the naughty list)Â so we can see Chris in full HD. I can’t wait.
Chris’s three-year reign of terror has ended. Okay, maybe that statement is a bit exaggerated but there has been a turning point in the Bad Cat Chris household.
Previously, Chris was able to dominate the other cats without fear of reprisal. He would often, out of the blue, pounce on Tigger or Abbey, pin them down and bite them on the neck. After a few minutes, he would then cozy up along side one of them like nothing had happened. Now that Abbey is gone and our new Kitten Puck is here, it is not so easy for him anymore. Puck fights back!
The two of them spend much of the evening going at it. Chris will attack Puck and Puck will counter with his own attack. I often see Chris as the submissive one during some of their many battles. It makes me think of Karma and the saying, “What goes around, comes around.”
Although it is no longer surprising, it is still amazing that at over three and a half years old, Chris still has the energy and personality of a kitten. The two of them seem like a perfect match for each other.
Now they are a great match, but I know that a year from now, puck will have matured and Chris will still be Chris.
Tigger, Chris and Puck
On another note, I just learned that Alex died. If you read the post, The Great Upheaval, you would know that Alex had to be left behind when we moved back to Florida from Myrtle Beach. He stayed with a friend that we knew would take good care of him, and he did.
Alex was the brother of Abbey, who died two months ago (story here). Both were great cats and only eight years old. They will be missed.
Alex (on top) with Abbey, Tigger and Chris
In my last post I mentioned that we were finally able to close our bedroom door by putting plastic under the door and objects next to it that kept Bad Cat Chris from digging the carpet. That, combined with the fact that Chris now had a cat door to the patio, meant that we were able to finally get a good night sleep. He usually woke us up in the middle of the night with some whining and scratching on the door but we ignored him and he soon went away.
This lasted a week or two until Chris focused on a new strategy to open the door. Actually the strategy was old, annoyance, but the method was new. He started trying to open the door using the door handle. This particular door had a lever handle instead of the more common round handles. This made it easy for him to stretch and pull the handle down. The only thing that kept him out was the fact that this door had a slightly tighter fit that the closet door that he could open at our last home. It also opened in, instead of out and he did not have the weight to push it open.
None of that mattered though because I don’t think he was trying to open the door. I think he knew that was not possible so his plan was to get one of us to open it. If you think about it, he did the only logical thing he could do. He annoyed the crap out of us. Every time he pulled the handle down and let go, it made a loud noise. He would stand on two legs and flip the handle repeatedly.
I think he could only stand on his hind legs for short periods of time so there would usually be thirty seconds of handle flipping followed by a ten second break and then it would start over again. It worked. This was his ticket into the bedroom. We still locked him out every night but usually sometime between 3:30 and 4:30 the handle flipping would start and he would be let in.
Chris won that round but we humans were not going to let a cat outsmart us (again) so we did the only thing we could do. We installed a round door knob. Score one for the humans. Our victory was short-lived though but that is yet again, another story.
Chris is now on Facebook and Twitter, click the link on the sidebar or go to facebook.com/badcatchris or twitter.com/badcatchris.
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.
Bad Cat Chris 