What could be better to scratch on than a real tree like nature intended?

What could be better to scratch on than a real tree like nature intended?

Chris doesn’t always win. Sometimes I am smarter than he is. When he started knocking over his food bowl, I started keeping the end bowl mostly empty but then he would go to a lot of trouble to knock over all the bowls, which seemed illogical because he started doing it because he was too lazy to stand up.
I decided to buy another pair of bowls on a wooden stand so now he has to eat standing up again.


Check and mate!
I mentioned before that Chris started knocking his bowl over because he was too lazy to get up and eat standing up. It was limited to the Bowl on the end so I started keeping very little food in that bowl. Of course, as usual, whenever we compensate for one of Chris’s bad behaviors he compensates for our compensation.
My wife sometimes doesn’t sleep well and gets up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. She was up very early this morning and came back to bed when I got up. When I walked out to the dining room I saw all three cat bowls sitting on the table and a bunch of cat food on the floor inside the catch-all mat. I picked up the mat and dumped all of the food back into one of the bowls and put it back down on the floor.
A little bit later I looked down and saw this.

Rose told me later than he had dumped over all three of the bowls. We now need to compensate for his compensation of our compensation. Perhaps I will look for those bowls on a raised wooden block like we had before.
All our cats love boxes but Frankie, above all, can’t resist jumping inside a new box, often without looking at what is inside first.

Frankie and Chris go through phases of liking and not liking each other. Here they are during the liking phase.

I think Frankie mostly tolerates Chris and his annoying behavior more than he actually likes him but when he washes Chris it looks like there is a little liking going on.
I took Frankie for a walk on Saturday and we stayed relatively close to home this time. Frankie spent a lot of time doing things other than walking.

After hanging out by the pool area we spent some time relaxing at the picnic area. By that I mean napping.


Eventually we made our way back home but when I opened the door Frankie didn’t want to go inside so I had to pick him up and put him in the house. When I did that, Chris was at the door waiting to go out but we needed to leave for a wedding, so Chris didn’t get his turn. I felt really bad about that.
Here is Abbey, Tigger, and Chris from almost eleven years ago on September 11, 2011. I couldn’t help but think of that Sesame Street song when I saw this.

Frankie loves lying on the perch by the windows in the cat’s room, which is what we call the Florida room. My mother calls her patio the Arizona room. I don’t know where she came up with that dumb name.

Sometimes I see Chris or Floki in this spot but it mostly belongs to Frankie.
The other night my wife and I were sitting in bed, winding down before bedtime. Frankie was on my lap like he often is.

Rose looked at him and said something like, “Do you know that Frankie never lies on my lap? Not ever. And I’m the one that saved him.”
It’s true. We adopted Puck for Rose but Puck took to me more so she wanted her own cat. . . again. When we found Frankie he let Rose hold him and snuggled up to her enough to win her over and get adopted. After that, he was my cat
So, while Frankie was on my lap, Rose said to him, “Frankie, you come see Mama! C’mon Frankie, come to Mama.”
Then, as if he understood English, he got off my lap, walked over to Rose and let her pet him for about eight seconds, then walked back and got on my lap again.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Here is a photo from just over 11 years ago. It is of Abbey, Chris, and Tigger taken on August 24, 2011.

It was common back then for Abbey and Tigger to sleep together and also for Chris to wedge himself between the two of them like a small child sleeping with his parents.