Tag Archives: escape

Lightning Crashes, Frankie Gets Loose

Saturday afternoon I took Frankie for his weekend walk. We walked across the street and up three houses. Frankie did his usual plant sniffing while I waited in the hot sun. Even though it was close to evening, it was still fairly hot.

When he was done smelling everything he led me behind the house where the edge of the community meets the fence that separates us from the power lines. We stood under a tree while Frankie did more investigating with his nose.

Suddenly I heard a crackling noise that was followed by a bright flash and almost instantaneously came the very loud bang of thunder. For about two seconds both Frankie and I were frozen in shock, especially since I didn’t even notice a dark cloud until after it happened. I didn’t see exactly where the lightning struck but it was very close and I became aware right away that we were standing under a tree. My first thought was to scoop Frankie up and get out of there but before I could move, Frankie ran and jerked the leash out of my hand.

He ran straight home and hid under my car while panting heavily. I tried to talk him out but he wasn’t budging. Finally, I decided to take his picture and pulled out my phone. That is when he exited on the other side of the vehicle.

I didn’t get the picture but this is a picture from the past that shows what he looked like under my car.

Once he got out from under my car he went for the back door and waited for me to open it. That was something he rarely does.

Once inside, Chris was relentless with his begging to go out. He knows he goes out after Frankie and he would not let me forget it. After a short time, I decided it was safe and let Chris out.

He was so happy to be out, no matter what the danger.

Photo Friday: Planning His Escape

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This photo shows Frankie sizing up the tree he plans to use to get over the tall fence. I had to drop my phone and grab him as he reached the top of the fence, and then pull him back to my side.

Photo Friday: Frankie Houdini

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Last week I took Frankie for a walk and he dropped down and started rolling in the dirt. I assumed he was taking a dust bath and thought it was cute so I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture. Shortly after he stood up I noticed his entire harness was around his waist and he was seconds away from escaping, so I grabbed him and fixed his harness before continuing our walk.

It wasn’t until later, when I looked at the photo, that I realized he was doing his Frankie Houdini act for me.

Tag Team Cat Escapes

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I have reached a point where I hate entering and leaving my house because Chris and Frankie are always at the door waiting to run out.

Frankie escaped over the weekend and led me on a wild cat chase. Eventually he ended up under the car next door where he knows I can’t catch him. Whenever he goes under a car or a house I just have to wait him out, which I did.

I sat on my front steps for about ten minutes and, surprisingly, he came out from under the car and started meowing at me. I called to him and he walked up to the edge of the steps.

Since there was a railing between us I decided it would be safer to not try to grab him. Instead, I stood up, put my hand on the door and opened it when it looked like he was ready to come in. He hesitated for two second and then, as he was preparing to jump, Chris ran up to the door and scared him off. I think he ran out the door but I don’t remember. In any case, Frankie was in the wind again and it took some time before I was able to retrieve him.

On Monday morning my wife had to leave early for a business trip. At 7 a.m. I helped bring her luggage out to the car. As I was going out, Chris appeared out of nowhere and ran out the door. I rarely swear but I must have sounded like a Boston Truck Driver that morning. It was a minor incident, since Chris is easy to catch, but the frustration of not being able to come and go out of my own house reached a boiling point.

I put the luggage down and picked up Chris. I opened the door to put him inside and Frankie ran out. More swearing. Now my wife has to leave for her trip and I have to hunt down Frankie.

I lost track of him so I finished helping Rose with her luggage. She then left and I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes looking for Frankie. I had never seen him disappear for so long and I started to worry about him. If Rose was home I would have asked for help. I walked around until my shoes were saturated from the cold, wet grass. It was then that I spotted him behind our house. Of course, he wasn’t ready to come in yet.

Now we played a game of cat and human until he tired and was ready to come home. He actually came up our driveway to the back door. I opened it and he walked right in. This time Chris was not there to spoil it.

To Catch a Cat

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Frankie escaped three times last weekend by using a trick that Chris figured out years ago; He no longer hesitates when the door opens. As soon as the door cracks open, out he goes. Once out, he is nearly impossible to catch. I have to wait until he wears himself out before I can catch him.

The following video was compiled from two separate escapes, Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.

It is very similar to what Chris used to do four years ago.

In other news, we could not get Chris a vet appointment until late Tuesday. I am concerned because when we got home today I noticed that both of his eyes are compleatly dilated. I called the vet back but they had closed by then. I did leave a message that I was concerned and asked if they could squeeze him in on Monday. I will be at work so Rose will have to bring him.

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 games me no trouble and let 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.

Frankie Escapes His Harness

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I discovered a flaw in Frankie’s harness. I know it is a little big for him and not the the most secure harness in the world but it is very easy to put on him and it has worked so far.

Walking a cat is not like walking a dog. You go where they want to go. On a recent walk, Frankie took me behind our house and across the next street. The roads get very hot in the summer time around here and I saw that Frankie was being affected by it. He seemed to hurry across the street and stand in the grass where it was cooler. After inspecting the bushes for a while we headed back to the street. A few seconds later, Frankie found refuge in the shadow of a car.

I normally try to keep him away from Cars because I don’t want him under them, but in this case I knew his feet were hot so I thought I would give him a minute or two to cool down. Before I knew it he was under the car pulling at the leash. In an instant I was holding a leash and an empty harness. It seems that the trick to escaping this harness is backing up.

I was not thinking like a news reporter and put my phone in my pocket and stop taking pictures at that point. I tried to coax Frankie out from under the car but he wasn’t having any of it. Eventually, I walked home and came back with a pool noodle that was in my shed. I thought I could intimidate him with the noodle but that didn’t work. Instead, he growled, hissed and attacked the noodle.

I gave up on the noodle ideas and brought it back to the house. I look for something else that might work and found a water bottle. I thought a little water might encourage him to get out from under the car, but when I returned he wasn’t there.

I looked around for a minute thinking he would be very difficult to find, but I found him hiding in the bushes next to the car. So I picked him up and carried him home while he hissed at me all the way.

Escape is a Team Effort

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My friend was at our house on Sunday and as he was coming in Chris ran out the door. With quick reflexes, my friend grabbed Chris before he made it past the first stair. Unfortunately, the delay in closing the door was long enough for Frankie to slip out. That, in turn, was the distraction Chris needed to get away as well.

Chris usually stays close so I don’t worry too much about him. Mostly he just eats grass but he will wander away if given enough time.

Frankie is the one I worry about because he just takes off. I think he searches the neighborhood for fleas, at least that seems to be the result sometimes. If he is not going under homes then he is hiding under cars so I can’t catch him.

On this day I just gave up and waited until Frankie was ready. While I was waiting I retrieved Chris and put him in the house. Eventually, Frankie came out of hiding and I coaxed him to the front door. I didn’t want to scare him by trying to pick him up so I just opened the door and let him walk inside.

But wait…. As he was about to enter the house I could almost swear he had a look of surprise on his face like he thought he was about to explore a strangers house and found out it was his own. When he saw where he was he quickly turned around and ran off. Not long after that I found him too pooped to resist and carried him home.

Our Uncontainable Cat

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These days, Frankie has proved to be more of a pain-in-the-butt than Chris. Both of the cats are very eager to get outside so coming and going can be a daunting task. What makes Frankie a bigger pain is he will run away while Chris stays close to home.

I had the day off from work on Thursday and needed to get something out of the car for Rose that morning when Chris came out of nowhere and ran out the door. While I was distracted with trying to stop Chris, Frankie ran out the door behind him. Chris usually just rolls around on the driveway or walks to the edge to eat grass so I wasn’t worried about him, but I was worried about chasing Frankie around the neighborhood with my bare feet so I had to run back inside to get shoes.

Chris is content eating grass.

When I returned Frankie was nowhere in sight so I walked around looking for him. I walked around the house and around several nearby houses and finally decided to go home and hope he returned. When I got there, Frankie and Chris were standing in the driveway smelling each other. I took that opportunity to grab Frankie and put him inside.

A short time later Frankie slipped past me again. This time I was able to grab him relatively quickly. It was almost like he wanted to be caught.

Later that day I came home with groceries. Getting in the house while loaded down with bags is always a challenge. I usually open the door quickly and shove the bags in the doorway with hopes that will block someone from escaping. It doesn’t always work and this time Frankie slipped past me and was off. I dumped the bags in the house and took off after him. Fortunately I had my shoes on this time.

This is an older picture of Frankie evading capture because I was not able to get a picture of him this time.

He led me on a good chase and then I lost him. I looked for him for about ten minutes but he was nowhere in sight. Suddenly, I heard a meow and he was standing right behind me, taunting me. I tried to pick him up but he ran and I lost him again. This time he disappeared for a long time. I decided to go in for a few minutes and I opened up a can of wet food and put it in three dishes, even though I only had two cats in the house.

I then went back outside and looked for him again with no luck. I got on my bike and rode around the neighborhood but saw no sign of him. I finally decided I was going to give up for a while and give him time to come home but the sun was starting to get low and I didn’t want him outside in the dark so I took one more walk around to look for him.

This time I saw him about two houses down and walked towards him. When I got close, I could see he was tired and panting and thought it would be easy to catch him but he was not ready to come in. He didn’t run away but he walked very fast. I walked fast too. I didn’t want to run and scare him. Finally after several minutes, he gave up and l picked him up and carried him home. He hissed at me but was happy when we got home because there was food in the bowl waiting for him.

When we can afford it, we want to have a screened area put in at the side door as a buffer zone. Hopefully I won’t lose Frankie before that happens.

Escape Artist Bad Cat Chris’s Most Daring Escape Yet

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These last few days have been cool and we have been leaving the window open on the door near the bathroom while Rose gets ready for work. We put a stool or chairs there so the cats can look outside and they love it.

After the cats got bored with the window Saturday morning, Rose moved the stool away. I was in the other room so I didn’t see what happened next but I heard Rose scream, “Come quick! Chris jumped through the window!” When I came, I saw the window open with no screen in it. Rose told me he jumped from the ground and through the window. He popped the screen out like it wasn’t even there (thanks to the weight he has put on lately) and landed, seemingly uninjured, on the stairs below.

I wish I was videoing him when that happened but I missed it. I also didn’t have my camera with me when I came running but this is where the screen landed.

Now we are going to have to keep the windows closed, or open only slightly, because of one bad apple, or in this case, one bad cat.

After thinking about it, this may not be his most daring escape but I don’t feel like changing the title. I think that happened while he was still young. You can read that story here.