I know it is hard to see but there is a small bird on the bird feeder. I opened the door this morning to let Frankie onto the catio and the bird didn’t move. He stopped eating and watched, but he stayed put (I use “he” in a generic sense because I don’t like “it.”). Then when Frankie jumped onto the storage box, I thought surely the bird would fly away, but again he stayed put. I left to get my phone and was certain he would be gone when I came back but still, he stayed, even after I opened the door again to get the shot.
On another note, does anyone know if Pam from One Spoiled Cat is okay?
Google automatically backs up my photos, and they informed me my drive was full, so I was looking for pictures to delete when I came across this picture of Chris and Floki. It was taken August 22, 2024, and is the fourth from the last photo I have of Chris. I thought I would share it.
Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of Chris’s passing. I wanted to post something about it yesterday, but I lost track of time and didn’t think about it until today. I also wanted to publish the new book about his life on that day, but my cover artist’s mother fell ill and the cover was delayed. It arrived this morning.
I added text to it and formatted it, which I will show you when it is ready, perhaps tomorrow. What do you think?
I thought a lot about Chris while writing the book and I hope this keeps his memory alive. He really was special and is missed very much.
A few minutes ago, I heard a loud noise from outside and soon realized it was the lawn guy. He must have hit something solid with his weed whacker. I looked onto the catio to see if Frankie wanted to come inside but instead, he was more interested in watching the lawn guy. He did, of course, turn to look at me when I opened the door to take his picture.
You may notice from the photo that we added another bird feeder. That is another story. Those Nanday Conures I had mentioned in a previous post had been visiting our neighbor and Rose wanted them to visit our house but we were using the wrong bird seed because of a previous issue with a rat. Since we hadn’t seen the rat, we thought we would throw caution to the wind and try to lure the birds to our house.
I ordered seed from Amazon but the bird feeder from Home Depot. It arrived without the plexiglass sides, so it had no way to hold the seeds. To speed things along, I went to our local Home Depot, which does not sell bird feeders, and bough a sheet of plexiglass which I cut to size. I then learned that the seed I ordered had been delayed so I went to Pet Supermarket the next day and bought conure seed.
At some point in the middle of all this I ran into my neighbor who mentioned that the Nandays stopped coming to his feeder. I don’t think they are migratory birds but what are the odds they stop coming around at the very moment I am putting something together to attract them.
Anyway, the new feeder has been up since Tuesday, but no new birds have shown up yet.
Frankie has known for a long time how to get me to do what he wants me to do. He goes to Rose.
Usually, it is about food. I will look at his bowl and see there is still wet food in it. He will look at his bowl and see the same food he ate an hour ago. This time, though, it wasn’t about food.
I usually take him for a walk between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning. Yesterday I was working on editing my latest book and let the time get away from me. At around 8:04, he went into the bedroom where Rose was getting ready. He hopped onto the bed and meowed at her several times.
She got up and said, “What? What is it?”
Frankie jumped off the bed and when he reached the door turned to see if Rose was following. She was so he led her through the house to where I was sitting.
What bothers me is he didn’t come to me first. He went right over my head to the top.
As Frankie and I returned from our walk this morning, we encountered a rabbit in front of our house. I was surprised how close it let Frankie get before running off.
My wife has a bag she uses for towels when we go to the pool. The other day we put our towels in the wash and Rose temporarily set the bag on the dining room table. Ten seconds later this happened.
Frankie took his time yesterday smelling this storm drain.
I assume it is because there is a feral cat that seems to regularly use the stormwater sewers as a way to get around without being seen. A larger storm drain closer to our house has a metal grate over it and I have seen the cat through the grate on our walks at least twice, maybe more.
Today is National Hug Your Cat Day so I thought I would share a picture of our most huggable cat: Chris. Here he is with Rose on October 3, 2009, six weeks before we adopted him. We were lucky someone didn’t grab him up first. Actually, someone did adopt him but returned him the next day because he was so bad.
Bad Cat Chris 