I saw something I don’t see too often the other night. Frankie was washing Chris. The photo below was taken at 9:19:20
Four seconds later, I snapped this photo at 9:19:24.
Between the two photos Frankie whacked Chris three or four times on the head. Why this happens, I will never understand.
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It is such a pleasure to see how our cats nap together. In this photo, Frankie is the engine, Chris is the dining car, and Floki is the caboose.
I really think that Chris is the glue that holds everyone together. If something happens to him, I fear we won’t see this anymore.
Note: When I scheduled this post, I set the time and forgot to change the date which is why some of you are seeing it early. I could have deleted it but I’m too lazy to start over.
Frankie has always been interested in squirrels. Whenever we go for a walk and he sees one, he sinks down to the grass like a stalker and actually thinks he might catch it. This morning he chased one up a tree, but the squirrel remained low, just out of reach, as if he was deliberately taunting Frankie.
Yes, I did it again. Chris’s fourteenth gotcha day was Tuesday and I missed it. I remembered the previous Friday, but I was busy at the time and didn’t think about it again until late last night.
We adopted Chris on November 14, 2009. He was about six months old at the time. I first met Chris over a month before while cleaning cages at PetSmart. He jumped from the floor to my back and climbed me like Mount Everest. When he reached my shoulders, he started biting my ear and then my nose.
Can you imagine a kitten like that not getting adopted? Actually, he did get adopted but he was far too annoying and was returned the next day. A week or two after I first met Chris, I brought my wife to the Sav-R-Cats adoption center in Surfside Beach South Carolina to see him. That was on the third of October.
Chris meets RoseChris at adoption center with Rose.
Alas, we didn’t adopt him that day. We already had too many cats. We also had a cruise coming up as well as a business trip for my wife.
On the twelfth of November Rose was away on her business trip and I was at the shelter. I was a volunteer, and my job was to photograph cats and post them on Petfinder, but I never photographed Chris for some unknown reason. Chris got on my shoulders again and another volunteer photographed me with my phone. In 2009, I did not have a good camera on my phone.
I texted Rose with the photo and said, “Can we keep him?”
When she returned from her trip we went to the shelter and brought him home. He took over from the moment we let him out of the carrier. We didn’t do what you are supposed to do. We just unleashed the kraken on the rest of our cats.
With Fall upon us, the days are getting shorter. As a consequence, Frankie sometimes goes on a walk while it is still dark outside.
The last time we went out Frankie stalked several squirrels. Unfortunately for Frankie, there is a large, noisy human that goes where he goes so the squirrels are not surprised.
As most of you know, we keep the cats out of our bedroom at night because Chris is far too annoying. Lately, Floki has been crying outside of our bedroom door every morning starting at around 4:15. Chris decided that what Floki was doing was not annoying us enough, so he took over. Now, every morning starting at 4 a.m. Chris is out there scratching on the door. He is relentless, too. Sunday morning I thought I could wait him out. I thought he would give up after fifteen minutes. Instead, fourty-five minutes later, I was the one who gave up.
I gave them all wet food and went back to bed. My wife asked, “Did you give them dry food, too?”
“No,” I said. “If I put dry food down, Chris won’t eat the wet food.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but he will surely be back scratching on the door in five minutes.”
I don’t know how many minutes passed, but he was scratching on the door a short time later so I had to get up and put dry food in his bowls.
That day I went to Target and bought a child gate and put it so Chris could not get down the hallway to our bedroom door. It worked but I returned it today because my wife often gets up in the middle of the night and I feared she would trip over it in the dark.
The other bad thing he has started doing is dragging his water bowl across the floor, spilling its contents along the way.
The bowl belongs against the wall, left of the coo coo clock cables.
This one is a head scratcher. I had a tall bowl there before but he started tipping it over. Now that I have a shorter bowl, dragging it across the floor is his alternative. He has done this several times now, including ten minutes ago, which reminded me to write about it.
I am at a loss for what to do about both of these new issues.
It’s not bad enough that Chris has to tip over his food bowls because he is too lazy to stand up and eat, now he started tipping over his water bowl.
The cats have three water bowls. The one that is used most often is a raised water bowl that is in the living room. There is also a bowl in the cat’s room and another bowl in our bedroom. Those are not raised bowls. Friday I noticed water in the living room next to the bowl. It was not tipped over but there was a significant amount of water on the floor. The next day Rose told me that Chris had tipped the water bowl over twice.
I decided to put the tall bowl in the cat’s room and put the regular bowl in the living room. I thought this might solve the problem. Not long after I did that, I saw Chris walk over to the water bowl, lie down, and start drinking while lying down.
A little while later I saw what he did with the raised bowl in the cat’s room.
Bad Cat Chris 