We adopted Frankie on February 15, 2014. I realized I forgot last week but I was busy and distracted. Pretty much normal for me.
I don’t think I ever published the first photo I ever took of Frankie. We saw him at a Petsmart in Clearwater, Florida. Rose was actually looking for a female cat but couldn’t resist Frankie’s charm.
Rose calls him a liar now because he put on the charm for her in the shelter and soon after we got home, when this photo was taken, but now he is my cat.
We don’t know much about Frankie’s history. He only had a number, no name. His chart said he was three years old, which means he is twelve now but he still acts like a kitten sometimes.
It has been thirteen years since Chris came to live with us and I don’t think it is a stretch to say that he changed our lives. I imagine things would be very different if I didn’t need to fill in for someone that day at the Petsmart adoption center where I first saw Chris. For one thing, I probably would not be blogging today and would have missed out on knowing so many great people . . . and pets.
I think this is a good time to walk down memory lane.
I believe this is the first photo I have of Chris. It was taken with the low-quality camera that was on my non-smartphone at the time. I had met Chris a few times before while volunteering at the shelter and thought he would make a good candidate for adoption. I even spoke to my wife about him. Another volunteer snapped this photo with my phone and I texted it to my wife, who was out of town on a business trip. I wrote, “Can we keep him?”
When Rose first came to see him he did not disappoint.
After we got him home he continued his affection.
But first, there was a home to explore. Here he is moments after we arrived home and I opened his carrier.
He basically took over the house and our other cats just let him. In return, Chris was very affectionate to the other cats, weather they liked it or not.
He even influenced others to misbehave.
But he has always been the glue that holds the group together.
I will leave you with a “Best of Bad Cat Chris” video that I put together about seven years ago.
Many of you know I wrote an ebook about Chris over nine years ago. Much of it was taken from this blog and tells the story of our early struggles with raising a bad cat. I have made the book free until the end of the day Wednesday. To get your free kindle ebook, click here.
I forgot Frankie’s Gotcha Day which was last week on the 9th. Since his chart labeled him as three years old, I also consider it his eleventh birthday. Frankie was actually an early Valentine’s Day gift for my wife in 2014. she wanted a cat instead of jewelry that year. Rose’s previous cat, Puck, became my cat as did Frankie, eventually, which is why we got Floki but I’m getting ahead of myself.
You can read about Frankie’s adoption here. I also posted several photos of Frankie in two posts three years later. See the first one here. I won’t repeat those here but I do want to show some newer photos of Frankie as well as one photo from day one that I forgot about.
Here is Frankie on his first day with a blanket in his mouth.
I thought that habit developed later.
Here he is in 2017 on one of his walks that he loves.
Here he is with Floki enjoying the catio we built at a previous home in 2018, days before Puck died.
Here he is after one of his many escapes. He uses vehicles to make it difficult for me to catch him. If I get close, he simply backs up where I can’t reach him.
I always consider Chris to be the touchy-feely cat but Frankie has his moments. Here he is with Puck.
We usually see Frankie stretched out.
But sometimes he likes to curl up into a ball.
We are very happy we adopted Frankie and I think he is happy too.
Today marks twelve years since we adopted Chris. He has been with me longer than any other pet I have ever had and has become such an integral part of this family that I can’t imagine what life would be like without him.
I met Chris while volunteering at a shelter in Myrtle Beach called Save-R-Cats. They were in the local PetSmart on a rotating basis and I went in one morning before work to clean the cages. I let all of the cats out of the top row of cages while I cleaned them. Suddenly, a kitten, about four or five months old, jumped from the floor onto my back and clawed his way up to my shoulders. He then proceeded to nibble on my ear and then on my nose. That kitten, of course, was Chris.
We didn’t adopt him right away. At some point, he was adopted and then returned the next day because of his bad behavior, although I don’t remember when that occurred.
Sometime later my wife came from the shelter and met Chris. That meeting went pretty well.
Chris meets Rose
Still, we didn’t adopt him because we were not ready. We had a cruise coming up and my wife had a business trip to go on after the cruise. While she was on that trip, I went to the shelter and saw that Chris was not only still there, but he also climbed up onto my shoulders again. A shelter worker took a picture of me and Chris with my phone, which had a bad camera even for 2009 standards.
I sent the picture to my wife with the text, “Can we keep him?” I think she agreed but I wanted to wait for her to get home from her trip so we can make the decision together. That way, if Chris turned out to be a bad cat, it wouldn’t be totally my fault.
When Rose returned, we went to the shelter one more time to see Chris before making a decision. Once there, we couldn’t go home without him.
When Chris got to our house he immediately took over to the surprise of our other four cats.
The next few years were pretty difficult as we dealt with problems such as Chris pooping where he shouldn’t, getting on the counters, opening doors he should not be able to open, bothering us while we were sleeping, trying to escape, digging the carpet and I’m sure many other things I can’t think of right now. But during this time we also knew that he was worth it because, besides being a constant source of entertainment, he was probably the most loving being this Earth has ever seen.
While Chris can still be quite annoying, he doesn’t get into as much trouble as he used to. What hasn’t changed is the love. Chris is a shining example of pure love in physical form.
Ten days ago I posted about Chris’s eleventh Gotha Day but it seems I was having a senior moment and didn’t know what day it was. Chris’s real Gotcha Day is today, November fourteenth, not November fourth. It’s amazing what a difference adding a one can make.
What made me realize my mistake was the photo below that came up on my Facebook app on Thursday and said “Eleven Years Ago.”
Chris meets Rose, October 3, 2009
This is a photo of Chris when he first met Rose at the shelter. You can see he was never shy. I looked at the date which was November 12th and thought two things. First I thought that Chris’s Gotcha Day was two days away so why did I write a post about it last week? I then thought it was weird that that photo was from November 12th and not November 14th.
After thinking about it I realized Rose met Chris much earlier. I looked it up and saw this photo was taken October 3rd, six weeks before we adopted Chris. Back then we didn’t post to Facebook from our phones and I probably posted that photo when we decided to adopt him.
In case you are wondering why it took so long it was because we had a cruise planned in October which took us back to Florida for more than a week. We couldn’t adopt a new cat and then leave. After we returned, Rose had to go to Alabama on a business trip. I think we brought Chris home the day after Rose returned from Alabama.
It is amazing that Chris was available for such a long time considering how loveable and affectionate he has always been. One reason, I think, is because he was adopted and then returned because he was too annoying for the couple who adopted him. That probably put a stain on his record. I know that happened but I don’t remember if that happened before I met him or in between this photo and the day we took him home.
In either case, I consider ourselves lucky to have found such a unique and special cat. In spite of his behavior, or perhaps because of it, he has been a real blessing in our lives.
Eleven years ago today we brought Chris home from the shelter. He took over our home from the day we opened his carrier. Here is what that looked like.
He has slowed down since then but he may actually be more annoying now then ever. His annoying behavior though is endearing, just like his naughty behavior was when we adopted him.
It is hard to believe that Chris has been with us now for ten years. He is not as much of a “bad” cat now as he was in his youth but he is still a huge PITA sometimes. Now, for example, he is on my lap as I write this and is clawing at my face and chest trying to get me to pay more attention to him.
I decided to keep this post simple today since I have already made a big deal about many of his other gotcha days. This time I thought I would just find an early photo of Chris that I have not already posted on this blog. The photo below was of Chris and Tigger taken on December 3, 2009, less than three weeks after we adopted him.
If you haven’t read it yet, the following two posts talk about Chris’s adoption.
My A.D.D. has got the best of me again and I forgot about Chris’s gotcha day. We adopted Chris on November 14, 2009, at a shelter called Sav-R-Cats near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We don’t know his origin story. I just know he was brought there from another shelter west of Myrtle Beach, but I don’t remember from where. He was also adopted once and returned the next day because of bad behavior.
Chris on adoption day, 2009.
Chris has been a very difficult cat to raise but the rewards in entertainment and especially love and affection have been incalculable.
I was going through the notifications on my phone Sunday evening and decided to click on one from google photos. I typically ignore them because they are not important but I decided to look. They had “stylized” one of my photos which was no big deal. Every day they do something with your photos. Sometimes it’s an animation, sometimes it’s an album from a certain day and place, sometimes it’s a collage from this day in history. I scrolled down and saw “Rediscover this day” from September 15, 2012. It was the day we adopted Puck.
Coincidently, we had friends over for dinner Saturday evening, one of whom was Lynn, our cat sitter. She talked about how sad she was that Puck was gone. She said Puck was her favorite and she loved how he always got on her lap and purred and purred. We all felt a bit sad after that.
On November 14, 2009, we brought home a cat that would be both the best and worst adoption decision we ever made. Of course, I’m talking about Chris. He turned our house upside down for years but he also has been the most loving and affectionate pet we ever had. The funny thing is, we took more time deciding to adopt Chris than some people take to decide to adopt a human child.
I first encountered Chris on September 24th or 25th of that year when I was a volunteer for a local cat rescue organization. He was up for adoption at Petsmart and I was cleaning the cages there that morning. I let out every cat on the top row and as I was cleaning the cages Chris jumped on my back and proceeded to climb onto my shoulders. Once there, he started licking and biting my ear and my nose.
We already had four cats at the time (Abbey, Alex, Tigger and Flash) and didn’t need another one. There was also another cat at the shelter, Kinsey, who was also a shoulder climber and one my wife and I both liked, but we had a belief at the time that gold cats made exceptionally good pets.
The organization that had Chris was called Sav-R-Cats and they rotated with two other shelters at the Myrtle Beach Petsmart. I think each organization got two weeks there. Chris was back at their shelter on October 3rd when I brought my wife, Rose, to see him.
Chris at adoption center with Rose.
They hit it off very well but we were not ready to adopt another cat at that time, especially since we had to go back to Tampa for a week-long cruise that I booked when we lived there. I picked a Tampa cruise so we wouldn’t have to drive far.
Another six weeks would pass before we would decide to take Chris home. At one point, either before or after my first encounter with him, someone adopted Chris and returned him the next day because he annoyed them all night by biting them. If they hadn’t brought him back, I would probably not be blogging today.
To celebrate Chris’s Gotcha Day, I made his ebook, “Bad Cat Chris; The Baddest Cat You’ll Ever Love” free for three days, starting today. This book is a condensed version of this blog with some added material. It chronicles the ups and downs of our life with Chris from the beginning until the middle of 2013. It was a very difficult and rewarding time for us. Thankfully, or not, Chris has mellowed some since then but we still can’t let him sleep with us because he is still a biter.
If you do read his book, I would love it if you would write a review on Amazon.
Bad Cat Chris 