So, there is a state of detante with the cats right now.
I think it’s because Dan and I have been sick for pretty much two and a half weeks, which means we have fed them late, slept late, not done things they expect on time.
This means that Indy is in desperate need of stimulus. No, I don’t know what’s with the ax. I left the ax on the table, as one does and found him just sitting there, looking like he would never plan anything. Which obviously he’s doing.
Anyway for the last several weeks we’ve been finding the door to the garage open. This is okay, because we have a pretty solid closing spring-activated glass door, but still we kept telling each other “We need to make sure we close the door when we leave.” Then last week Dan went to the doctor and left me sitting on the sofa, because I felt pretty sick. Minutes after Dan leaves, I hear noise from the door and go back to find that Indy has opened it. I told him off, and he was pretty upset at me, because OBVIOUSLY I was supposed to be GONE with daddy. So, he sat on the floor at my feet and glared at me for ten minutes solid.
What else has he been up to? Well, he can reliably open our bedroom gate (it’s a six foot gate we have to stop him bowling through the bedroom door.) This has become a game of wills between me and him. Most of the time he leaves the gate alone. Oh, yeah, he can only open it from the outside, not from the inside.
So, the other day when I came out of the shower, Muse was sitting on my bed, the gate was open and Circe was hesitating outside the gate. I picked Muse up and put her outside, but I knew that Indy was in there. The closet door was slightly open. It’s a sliding door, and he knows how to open it. However I was still feeling sick, and didn’t want to dive in the closet to find him. So, I went out instead, and pretended he didn’t know he was there.
I left him there for a couple of hours and fed the other cats while he was in there. When I went up, he was on top of my dressers, with his face pressed against the gate. He hasn’t broken in there again. :D
This morning he decided I was no longer allowed to leave dishes on the counter, and he batted all the silverware down. Thank heavens he didn’t do the glasses.
Other things he’s done: getting to any plastic bag with food I leave in his reach, including the FLOUR. Sigh.
Other than that? They’ve been super-needy. Today he insisted on sitting on my mouse hand, while his sister, Circe, crowded me from the other side.
Anyway, today I’m better, cold wise, just very tired, so I’m going to go to bed early with a book. Maybe that will fix it.
And because I can’t talk about cats without sharing pics, let’s have some pics. I promise more serious posts next week!
According To Hoyt 
Get well, Sarah, and thank you for posting this.
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Thanks for the cat update, as well as State of the Author. We too have been battling the Cold From Hell for the last 3 weeks, with much neglect (according to him) of our tuxedo. And he is giving us the same look that your cats have in all those pics: “You have disappointed me, hooman.” Hope you feel better soon!
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Hoping you get well soon! The kitties clearly feel you need lots of affection (and so do they) to assure you aren’t bored!
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There’s a reason they need the axe….
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Clearly Norwegian Forest Cats. Although honestly there is a serious Skyrim vibe to the front cat. Seeing shots like that (and people 3d printing a variety of helmets/hats for their cats) I often wonder if these shots are AI, If I tried to put something like that on either of my boys I’d draw back a stump.
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(guitar intro)
“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
“We come from the land of the ice and snow, of the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow…..”
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St Alfonso’s
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I will leave this tab open so that Prince Fluff the Magnificent can check on his sibs. For some reason, he adores sitting on my computer keyboard. He may try and send a message to them, so be warned…
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Maybe the people laid off by the WaPo can learn to take care of cats, either that or learn to code…tee hee
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No way a cat would put up with those good for nothing idiots. And no one is paying you 6 figures to clean cat boxes.
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Our first cat liked to go outside. We would leave the solid door open for air flow and the screen door latched shut, but he figured out that he could take a running jump and body slam the latch.
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One of our cats figured out he could jump up and hang from the screen while he poked the lever-style handle with his nose. The screen is still tattered from his efforts, although he’s been gone these many years. (Hey, it still performs the function of keeping bugs out.)
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Kittehs! 😄
I’ve had a persistent cough for about 3 weeks. After taking 10,000 IU (250 μg) of vitamin D every day for a week, along with a vitamin C, magnesium/zinc, B12 or a multivitamin, I think it’s getting better.
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Need more coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
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Third one down reminds me of a shot from “Bad Cats.” The caption was, “I’m feeling it. Are you feeling it?”
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(funky island music)
“Bad cats, bad cats, whacu gonna do? Wachu gonna do? Whachu gonna do when de come fa you….”
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Meow
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Oh, yes. The sleeping necessity of the Christmas Cold I had.
What was worse was that it made me sleep badly, until the muzzy-headedness lifted enough that I thought, Oh, yeah, I can get up and take cold medicine.
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“If you didn’t want me to have it, why did you call it a mouse?”
You are, of course, lucky that Indy has not disassembled it as a matter of principle.
I cannot let the day pass without acknowledging two very important birthdays: Ronald Reagan, and (for those who do or did observe America’s civic religion) Babe Ruth. Both were born on February 6th, and to bind them that much closer, it is impossible to imagine either man as anything but quintessentially American. That you can say this about two such very different men is, in itself, quintessentially American.
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Also luck that Modern mice use IR/laser for their tracking. I had at least one old style mouse with a ball disassembled in the deep past by my Orange Cat Spike. Not all Orange cats are stupid, either that or every last one of them is sandbagging pretending to be a doofus.
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One of the funniest bits of office humor I’ve ever seen involved cleaning your IBM mouse, particularly the mouse balls. Including the note that handling the improperly could cause a static discharge…
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The axe is, hmm , disturbing especially given the engineering proclivities of some of your feline cohabitants.
And yes we have an inveterate food thief in our pair. Stoick is a brown tabby and white that seems to identify as a trash panda. Kitchen garbage has a latching top to limit the scrounging. Other day I was walking upstairs and noticed two strands of something on the stair. On closer inspection, it was spaghetti we had had with some brown sauce (a la Chicken Marsala). Somehow Stoick had appropriated two strands from somewhere and had toted them across the house, likely to play with. As they had dried out they were no longer a good toy. He is a very odd boy.
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My dear Miz Kitty occasionally will use one of my boots as a stash. Not to bad if its a toy. Really unpleasant when it is something wet and squishy.
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Meanwhile, I am trying to figure out how to get it through the smallest cat’s head (Jellybean, he’s a teeny little long-haired grey tabby who barely weights 7 lbs, unlike our other monster cats) that he has CLAWS and TEETH and when the giant puppy* tries to chew on him he needs to stop just going limp and let her drag him around. She hasn’t hurt him–the dogs are always closely supervised because they are all smart and tend to get into things they shouldn’t–and I don’t think she would (not intentionally, anyway) but…I am getting tired of brushing out spit-matted long cat hair.
*who is not quite 9 months old and the size of a small pony–she’s half Anatolian, half goldendoodle, and definitely takes after the Anatolian half in size, though goldendoodles are not small dogs either.
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Glad you are on the mend from whatever illness hit the household. Keep getting better.
Great pictures of the floofs. Adorable.
Ours too open the closet doors on their schedule. We have bifold versions. Outside and room doors they haven’t figured out yet because we have round doorknobs, not levers. OTOH don’t latch them tight? They will push or pull open. Latter even with no obvious opening.
None of our cats will run outside unless invited. Only taken forever. Probably because the last time the two escape artists ran out, they ran out into a major rain downpour event. They were not happy. Our fault, don’t you know.
Off-topic. What is the best Quicken alternative? Preferably free. Do not need budgeting (which most of them I can find, put the emphasis on, which I understand. We do not need at this stage.) Do need the “upcoming charges/income” (auto entry “nice”, not required). Account Registries for bank accounts and credit cards. The only “asset” tracking I use is for vehicle/house loan tracking, and we only have the house currently. $100+/year is getting steep. (Hubby does use Quicken for brokerage tracking, but not required.) Oh, and ability to transfer from Quicken would be “nice”, but could just start new registers.
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Indy is very conspicuously not looking at the axe.
>
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I noticed too. :D
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Hmm… Indy could be worse – https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oatq1kboWSs
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Pwetty kitties! Please endeavor to continue to recover.
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