Frankie really likes to stretch out when he naps. He also seems to have a new favorite place to nap, a small area of concrete on the patio. It doesn’t matter how hot it is outside, you can usually find Frankie there.
Do you think putting this sign up would help?
I always feel bad for the other cats, Puck and Frankie, because they must be locked out of the bedroom because Chris is bad and can’t be in there. The reason Chris can’t be there is because he is the most annoying cat ever when we are trying to sleep. Nevertheless, I decided to leave the bedroom door open last night since Rose was away. I decided I would just give him a chance and if he was too bad I would just throw them all out and shut and lock the door (I have to lock it because Chris knows how to open it).
Chris and Puck immediately took advantage of the open door. Puck laid at my feet like the good cat that he is and Chris laid down by my head and immediately began clawing at my face and biting my shoulder and my nose. I expected that and put up with it for about ten minutes. I was hoping the excitement would wear off and he would get tired and go to sleep.
Hah! That’s like hoping a root canal won’t be that bad. Chris, of course, would not stop annoying me so I picked him up and put him down next to my side and held him there. That almost never works but this time I annoyed him and he got up and left, taking Puck with him.
The next thing I know it is 4:45 and Chris is crying and poking my face. I guess I would rate that experiment a moderate success.
Chris used to wake us up every morning at 4:00 a.m (see Four O’clock Chris) but eventually that changed to 5:00 a.m. It didn’t occur to me at first but Chris’s time didn’t change, ours did. That is why I somewhat dreaded the return of standard time.
Last night Chris started playing under the sheets as we were getting ready to go to bed. We decided not to lock him out and give him a chance to prove that he could stop being a bad cat for one night and sleep on our bed without being a huge pain in the you know what.
Surprisingly, he was pretty good for a while. He lied across my chest with his back feet on my pillow for 30 minutes without bothering me. Unfortunately I couldn’t sleep like that because his breathing was very fast and loud and his heart was racing faster than Carl Lewis, despite the fact that he was sleeping, or at least trying to sleep.
I changed position which then started the biting and treading on my face and neck. I tried for several minutes to get him to stop but in the end I had to get up and put him out. I then locked the door and went to sleep.
I slept until 4 a.m. when Chris jumped on our bed and woke me up. How does he do that? I checked the door and it was open but still locked. Perhaps he used a credit card. No… That’s silly. He’s a cat. Who would issue him credit?
As most of you know, one of our biggest problems with having a bad cat is that he keeps us from getting a good night’s sleep. In our last three homes, there was always some impediment that kept us from locking him out of the bedroom at night, but since we have lived in our new home, we are finally able to close the door and get some sleep.
What’s different this time? Tile floors. Yep… Sweet, glorious tile, made in Heaven and placed on our floors by divine intervention, or by a flooring contractor, I’m not sure. The point is, it is the answer to our prayers. Well, technically, I didn’t pray for tile floors, but I would have if I would have thought it would work.
I didn’t notice until I saw this picture that Chris pulled a paint chip off the bottom of the door.
Now we can close our bedroom door and Chris can’t dig a hole in the tile like he could in the carpet. Of course, nothing is ever that easy with Chris. Our door has the lever type door knob that I described in my post, The Annoyance Strategy. This allowed Chris to pull the handle down and release it, making a loud noise. He would do this over and over until someone got up and opened the door.
Last time we had to change the door knob because locking it still allowed the handle to move up and down. This time the handle will not move when it is locked so as long as we remember to lock it, sleep is almost assured.
The amount of sleep we get is still not enough but I will take almost enough over what we were getting. Chris now stands outside the door at 5 a.m. and cries and scratches at the door until someone opens it. In another post I called him “Four O’clock Chris” because that is what time he would wake us up every morning. Now it is five o’clock. I’m not sure if he has improved or if he just does not recognize daylight savings time. In any case, I just wish I was home every day so I could wake him up promptly at 3:00 p.m.
The first night with Chris was rough. Actually, every night for the last two and a half years have been rough, but we were not prepared for Chris at that time.
Normally our cats would gradually filter into our room at night and congregate on my side of the bed, eventually taking up about a third of the space, That was the biggest problem we had no deal with. Suddenly, we had a five and a half month old kitten who loved to bite. It did not take long to realize why he was returned to the shelter.
He would not sit still. If he wasn’t laying accross my neck and biting my nose, he was laying on top of Rose’s head and biting her ear. Rose used to tell people jokingly, “You can wear him as a scarf, you can wear him as a hat…” If the face biting wasn’t bad enough, he would see our toes move under the sheet and attack them. Ouch!
Removing him from the bedroom wasn’t an option because he would cry at the door and worse, dig at the carpet. It was very rough for a while getting enough sleep. Even today, on his best day, he wakes us up at 5:00 a.m.
We tried every thing we could think of. I tried putting something in front of the door so he couldn’t dig at the carpet but then he would come around into the bathroom, which had two entrances, and cry and scratch at the door relentlessly. I would have closed the second door but the litter boxes were in there.
We tried pulling the blanket over our heads so he couldn’t bite us but then it was like a game to him and he would work at digging his way in. I even bought a tube of calming gel but using it on Chris was like trying to calm a hurricane by blowing in the opposite direction. Eventually I felt like my marrage could be in jepordy if I couldn’t find a way for us to get enough sleep.
Day two – Chris attacks stuffed animal
Bad Cat Chris 