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.
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.
The raised bowl is now out of service.
I was going through photos and found this one of Chris and Floki from July.
I have so many photos that it is easy to miss some good ones sometimes.
I am writing this post from a cruise ship. My wife and I started our vacation yesterday.
Before we drove to the cruise terminal yesterday, I took Frankie for a walk. During the walk Frankie took me to the far side of our community’s laundry room. He walked between a fence and a bush, where I couldn’t follow, so I let go of his leash and went around to collect him on the other side.
Just then he heard or saw something that scared him and he took off running, dragging his leash behind him. I ran after him. He stopped momentarily but heard me running. That must have scared him more so he ran up a palm tree.
He then had to figure out how to get down so he turned around and came down like a squirrel.
It’s always an adventure with Frankie.
We live in Pinellas County, Florida, which is west of Tampa. As far as I know, a hurricane has never made landfall in the county, but we had some close calls. This was not that close, but we did get tropical storm force winds. Our house is under a large oak tree and we found it hard to get to sleep last night because every couple of minutes we would hear something dropping on the roof.
I got up at 5:30 this morning, and it was still raining and very windy. Despite that, Frankie would still ask to go outside every fifteen minutes. Finally, I had to say to Frankie, “Are you crazy? Have you looked out the window.”
Just before 10 a.m. Frankie became relentless. I looked out the window and noticed the rain had stopped, and the wind had reduced to a nice breeze. I couldn’t resist any longer and had to take him outside.
Fortunately, there was no noticeable damage to or near our house, although I haven’t checked the roof yet. The only evidence a storm came through were numerous twigs and branches on the ground, and my rake was blown into the yard.
So my record in Florida is 35 years and no hurricanes. Let’s hope I can continue the streak.
Floki is the only cat we ever had that seeks out Chris for attention. All the other cats paid attention to Chris only because Chris sought attention from them. It always makes us happy to see this bond.
The other day, Chris was on my lap when he decided to jump off and onto the nearby shelf. That shelf has been exclusively Floki’s domain . . . until now.
It wasn’t long before he was napping there.
I don’t know if Floki came around later and found Chris in his spot. If he did, I am probably lucky I missed it.
Chris often goes outside when Frankie comes back from his walk. Unlike Frankie, Chris usually hangs around the driveway area. On this particular day, he was content with taking a nap while lying halfway under my car.
Mornings bring sunshine into the cat’s room, where Frankie and Chris like to hang out. Sometimes the room is not big enough for both of them. Here they are reluctantly tolerating each other’s presence.
Bad Cat Chris 