Category: Rosencrantz

Cat Help in the Catio

Timothy Price16 Comments

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Work continues on the catio. We started preparing the old cement slab for resurfacing on Saturday, but then we discovered we needed to rent a high pressure sprayer to clean it before we put on the resurfacing cement, plus the temperatures are supposed to stay above 50º F for 8 hours after the new surface is applied. Since the temperature only got into the 40’s over the weekend we decided to prepare surfaces for painting.

The first photo is Laurie preparing to wire brush the French windows so I could paint them. In the second photo, she is telling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern what they could do to help. The third photo shows Guildenstern supervising Laurie. He had a lot to say about our work, so much so, that it wore him out and he had to take a break (fourth photo). The French windows and door had not been painted in 22 years. The ivy had grown up on them which marked and pulled off paint in various places, so I spent a good part of the day painting the windows and doors with a very good, “stain killer” primer. The last photo shows Laurie standing by the freshly primed windows.

As I have mentioned before, we live in a cold spot — the reason Laurie was dressed in layers of warm clothes to work on the catio. We went to a dinner party last night in Albuquerque. When we left the party at a little after 10:00 PM, the car showed the outside temperature was 47º F. When we got home 20 minutes later, the temperature at our house was 26º F. We live about 10 miles north and west as the crow flies, and about 700 feet lower than the part of Albuquerque we attended the dinner party, yet we were 21degrees colder.

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Let a Sleeping Cat Lie?

Timothy Price22 Comments

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Rosencrantz was so cute sleeping in, that I had to do a photo. I got only one shot of him sleeping before he kitty-sensed my camera, woke up, and looked around a bit disoriented. He was definitely unhappy with me disturbing his bliss by taking a photo of him while he was sleeping.

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Cold for the Cats

Timothy Price7 Comments

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I’ve gone out at sunrise the past two mornings (in 10º F temperatures nonetheless) to put the new roof on the catio. While I was out freezing, the kitties were in bed, under the covers, wondering why I was stupid enough to be out in the cold at such ungodly hours. As the first photo shows, I got a nice translucent roof installed that lets plenty of light in through the windows it covers on the north side of the sunroom. The kitties still can’t go out in the catio at night because I have to put wire up between the new roof and the structure over their kitty jungle gym.

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Cat Three

Timothy Price8 Comments

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I had one of those disgustingly productive days — I removed the roof from the “catio” but left the fencing around it intact. The kitties were supervising, and they thought I was a pretty cool cat working up on the roof, balancing on vigas, hopping between cross beams, and making quite a mess at the same time. They didn’t realize what I was doing until we all came it for the night and found the cat door to the catio blocked. Now my being on the roof all day doing dangerous things is like very un-cool among the cats.

The reason I deroofed the catio is that Laurie started reorganizing everything, and that turns into repurposing spaces. The roof over the catio was originally a shade structure to protect our bonsais and other plants from the intense sun we have in New Mexico. I later put a tin roof on it, but there was really no way to seal the edges against the house to make it useful for anything but plants, weights and cats without redoing the roof. So a roof redo is underway so I can seal the sides that are against the house and make it a more useful space. The last photo is the roofless catio taken through a very dirty window.

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Cats in Winter

Timothy Price18 Comments

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What do our cats do in winter? Romeo was not sure about me taking yet another photo of him. Rosencrantz made like a kitty statue, while Guildenstern relaxed on a Viking book to see if he could soak up some Old Norse. Mama Manx dozed on a “cat magnet” blanket, and Diné got warm lying on the heater vent.

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Cat

Timothy Price9 Comments

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Rosencrantz stepped on my iPhone that was laying on the counter next to my computer. He activated Siri, which asked him what he wanted. He meowed, and when I looked at the phone Siri had brought up the Wikipedia for cat. I tried to photograph it with Rosencrantz stepping on the phone, but I got too much glare of the phone’s surface, so I had to prop the phone up against my coffee cup. Rosencrantz still wanted to step on it, and stuck around for the photo. Rosencrantz is also a bit of a magical cat as he can apparently go through walls. We’ve let him out and then all of a sudden he’s back in and vice versa. It the second photo I got him half way in and out of the screen.

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iPhone Animals

Timothy Price5 Comments

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Often, when the kitties and birds are being cute, I pull out a camera and they cease being cute. But when I pulled out the iPhone (not the usual camera) Rosencrantz and René just stuck their faces in it.

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