How I Feed My Cats with Linux – I’m sure our cats would love something like this. I’d love to see a hopper that could dispense a measured amount of dry cat food. I like the microcontroller approach, but maybe this could be done with old dot-matrix printer parts. Hmm…
Continue reading “Linux Driven Cat Feeder”

This cat is WAY too smart (and WAY too good at finding trouble).

He has a taste for chocolate. He can SMELL an open chocolate box or container from a good several feet (the distance from the top of a table or counter to the floor plus a foot or two). He’ll look around and check if the coast is clear. If its not, he’ll quickly sit down and look innocent by like licking himself or look out the window. Then, when he thinks its clear, he goes for the chocolate. He’s really quiet about it so its taken us a while to figure out how he does this. Even though he’s neutered, he has balls enough to jump up on the table when we’re in another room or we’re reading AT THE TABLE!

So Saturday Olessia brings home 2 boxes of chocolate. One is in a plastic container and is chocolate covered almonds. The other is in a thin cardboard heart-shaped Valentine and it has all sorts of assorted chocolates. The almonds are sitting in the center of the table, with the lid closed. The cat managed to knock the almonds off the table and onto the floor. More importantly, he did this as we were falling asleep. No, not any earlier because we’d actually get out of bed. He waited long enough for us to grumble, “what was that noise?” and then go back to bed. Sunday morning Olessia was up first and discovers the plastic container was slightly chewed on, upside down on the floor and a couple covered almonds shuffled around on the floor (clearly, one or both cats had at least played with them). Lucky for us, not all of the almonds were lost.

Sunday afternoon, Powder had to investigate the 20 gallon tank which is home for the lizard’s crickets. He’s a heavy cat and the screen to the tank isn’t strong enough to support him. I’m doing my calculus homework in the basement and I hear a “thunk” sound. Then I hear a louder thunk followed by a crash. WTF? I got up and ran over to the sound and there is this white cat huddled in the corner of a 20 gallon tank. He’s sitting on the screen and the heat lamp has slid towards him. As he moved, the heat lamp came down and bumped him. I got there in time to move it out the way so he didn’t get burned.

I find out Monday evening he knocked one of Olessia’s glass makeup jars on the floor breaking pieces off the lid. What she told me was amusing about it was he’d push it an inch and look back at her. Apparently he wanted to be fed and I wasn’t up yet and he wanted her to do something about it. She ignored him. And he pushed her jar. She told him not to do it again. And he pushed her jar and to the floor it went. I told her you gotta keep an eye on that cat. He’s trouble!

So we’re finishing up dinner last night (Monday). I hear the sound of the cat toy on a stick and string being shuffled around. Murzik was in the kitchen trying to stay awake. Its priceless to see – she sits up all prim and proper and closes her eyes. Wait long enough and she wobbles as she snoozes! So it was Powder playing with the cat toy upstairs. “But he doesn’t play with it on his own,” I thought. Trouble! I ran upstairs and found the cat toy but no cat. I think it was the closest I’ve been to to investigating a crime scene. Where did the cat go? What did he do? Turns out he managed to get the attic door opened wide enough to let himself in (a box was put in front of the attic door to keep it closed). I open the door further and there he is, sitting there at the door looking at me like, “I was just sitting here!” I pulled him out.

After half an hour, we had picked him up and turned him upside down. Turns out his entire belly was gray from dust and dirt from the attic. I figure he was up in the attic for most of Monday and very possibly Sunday. There’s a lot of insulation in the attic and I prefer the cats not go in there for their health.

What makes this all funny is he either has this supper innocent look or he has this look on his face that says, “I know I’m pissing you off. What are you going to do about it?”
Continue reading “Powder: Looking for trouble”

Olessia took me out to lunch today (she’s on vacation). She told me Murzik had climbed the Christmas tree. The tree didn’t fall over. And hanging from the tree, Murzik appeared quite pleased with herself.

I’m thinking a web cam on the Christmas tree might be needed…

Continue reading “Murzik in the tree”