As you've undoubtedly noticed from the many photos I've posted, Jake likes to lay on my legs while I'm sitting on the couch. But only if I have jeans on! If I am in sweats or shorts or slacks, he wants nothing to do with laying on me.

Instead he will go to the end of the couch, sit down facing me, then stare at me until I go change into jeans.

Not exactly something I'm fond of given how much more comfortable it is to be lounging in sweats, but I've decided I am going to do everything I can to make my cats happy in the relatively short time they're on this earth. If he wants me in jeans, then that's what's going to happen...

But don't worry. When he's not on me, he's still flopped on his back spread-eagle to sleep...

And, no, I still cannot resist the urge to pet that belly...

Tonight was Halloween! The scariest night of the year... for Jake and Jenny. They are not accustomed to people knocking on my door and ringing my doorbell all night. They hate Halloween. Hate it! So much so that they usually cower upstairs in the closet.

But this Halloween I had two knocks on my door... total. And that resulted in four trick-or-treaters... total.

Which is pretty much just another evening here. Jake never left the living room, and Jenny ran upstairs both times... but ran back down immediately after the candy moochers had left. And since my turnout was so awful, I just told them to grab a handful, which they all happily did.

I had already picked out all the stuff I wanted for myself, so there wasn't a reason not to get rid of the rest.

I am away from home today, remotely checking in on the cats throughout the day.

Thursday night when I wheeled my suitcase out to the car, Jake and Jenny knew exactly what was happening, and their behavior changed accordingly.

Jake decided He wasn't leaving my side... laying on my legs, my lap, and even my feet. The only thing that got him to leave was when the dinner alarm sounded...

Yesterday morning, they were waiting for me when I woke up. Jenny was next to me, Jake down by my feet. At least he was until I woke up. Then he wanted belly scratches, which irritated Jenny because he flopped down on her space to do it...

Because I like returning home from a trip to a clean bed, I stripped the bedding off and threw it in the wash. Then I tried to put out fresh bedding, but I couldn't even get the sheets on before the cats were all over the bed again. Eventually I gave up and sat in bed to deal with my morning emails and work. Jake once again decided to invade Jenny's personal space, but she was asleep and didn't mind...

So I guess it all worked out in the end.

Until I went to leave...

Jenny visits me twice every night. The first time is around 2:00am. Most times I pet her for a few minutes, then off she goes. I think she just wants to make sure I'm still there or something. Other times she'll flop down and be petted for quite a while.

The second time she visits is always 4:00-4:30am. That's when I usually wake up to start in on work, and she knows if she's there she will get petted while I read emails.

But Jenny, being a cat, has no idea what a weekend is.

Which means she wakes me up around 2am. Wakes me up at 4:00am. Then, once I've fallen back asleep, she'll wake me again around 6:30am before her breakfast at 7:00am.

It's just how she's wired.

Fast forward to last night. I was getting maximum 4 or 5 hours of sleep all week, needed desperately to get some rest when I couldn't fall asleep, and ended up taking some sleeping pills around midnight. Once they kicked in, I crashed. Hard.

So hard that Jenny apparently couldn't wake me up at 2:00am this morning! I'm certain she tried, but I was in deep, deep sleep and didn't respond to her crying...

But don't worry, I was out of deep sleep for her 4:00am visit, as you can see.

And don't worry for me, because after I fed the cats and checked my personal email and social media for the week, I went back to sleep until 10:30am! I got a whopping 8 hours sleep, which almost never happens!

Because I have cats.

To wrap up this fine Caturday, I'm ending with this sweet rescue story...

Who the fuck would abandon a poor little kitten in the middle of a desert? Methinks that Gobi has used up a couple of their 9 lives!

Jenny has escalated her pickiness when it comes to the food she eats. Many times now when I throw down some wet food for her to eat, she's turning up her nose at it. Won't eat it. I've long suspected that her sense of smell is deadened a bit, and it could very well be that her ability to smell food has declined even further with age.

And so... I am rolling the dice every time I put food in front of her. Sometimes I can make it palatable by putting some stinky fish flakes around it. Sometimes that doesn't help. Sometimes I can add a few pieces of dehydrated fish in the mix and she eats it up. Other times it has no effect.

Thankfully, she's still yumming up the dry food, but I want to be sure she's well hydrated, so I continue to look for wet foods she'll eat.

As for Jake?

Yeah. No problem with finding something for him to eat!

Back when I was trying my best to care for my ailing mother, my anxiety was at the highest it had ever been. In an attempt to try and manage it without medication, I bought a weighted blanket. Which was advertised as a help to anxiety (among other things), but was completely useless when it came to me. So I packed it away in my closet and didn't give it another thought.

Until Jenny puked on the blanket I had on my bed. I didn't have any others unpacked from storage, so I grabbed the only on I could find: my weighted blanket.

"But Dave," you might be saying, "what does this have to do with Caturday?"

So here you go: It's freaking out my cats.

The weight it probably coming from some kind of tiny metal pellets. But Jake and Jenny think it's sand. So whenever the walk across it, they stop and try to "dig" into it.

Which is to say that I really, really hope that I don't come home to it being all busted to shit with a mess everywhere. Maybe I should be reconsidering getting a new kitten next year?

Yeah, if I ended up with a cat like that, it's likely more than the blanket that's getting shredded.

The cats are unhappy about the changing weather. No more lazy nights out in the catio because it's starting to get chilly out there at night.

So they spend more time indoors wanting to have my attention. Sometimes.

The nice thing about my cats taking naps next to each other while I'm trying to work in bed is that I don't have to be holding their feet or petting them the whole time. They are able to be happy laying next to each other without me...

Probably time to think about pulling out the warming pads and heated blankets!

I don't trim my cats' claws.

They have always been very good about not clawing furniture. I have a variety of different scratching posts around, and they are happy to restrict their scratching there. That takes care of their claws naturally, without my having to traumatize them by clipping, so I've just let them be.

As I was laying on the couch with my laptop working, Jake was sleeping beside me. All of a sudden I feel my leg getting poked. I move my computer out of the way, and this is what I'm seeing...

I mean, come on! Just look at this lethal murder mitten!

I said "Ow! Can you not claw my leg, Boo-Bear?" To which he responded by snarling at me...

As I lay there wondering what his reaction would be if I try to un-hook his claws, he got up and went to the end of the couch to give himself a manicure...

Would have been nice if he had done that before deciding to give me a flesh wound.

And so... Jenny's journey into becoming one of the most entitled, demanding little kitten princesses to ever exist. She has long been insistent on getting her pet-time when I go to bed. But then she started letting me know that she's impatient when I finally go upstairs to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. She sits outside the bathroom and meows her displeasure if I keep her waiting. It's cute. I walk outside and say "Okay, let's go then" and she goes running to my bedroom and hops on the bed waiting for me to show up.

Heaven help me if I forget something downstairs and have to run back down to get it. When I get back to my bedroom, she's on the bed meowing and meowing.

But now?

Jenny's taken it up a notch.

After the food dispenser drops her 9:00pm pre-bedtime snack, she'll chomp it down, then come to get me wherever I am (usually on the couch watching TV).

And if I don't get up and follow her upstairs, she will sit on the stairs and meow her little head off.

Assumably because the acoustics are great...

She does it because it works.

If I'm watching TV, I just finish watching it upstairs in bed while petting her.

Which is exactly what she wants.

I returned home yesterday to find that both cats were waiting for me. Not just Jake, but Jenny as well. That almost never happens. Jenny prefers to wait and see if Jake doesn't get murdered after he bounds down the stairs to greet whomever is opening the door.

As expected, the cats are all over me all the time... perhaps afraid I'm going to disappear again...

It's nice to be home. It's nicer to be missed.

Going on vacation is incredibly stressful when I'm having to leave my cats behind. Sure there are robots for food, water, and litter box... and my home is fully automated... and there's a dozen people I could call to run over if something went wrong... but it's still tough to leave knowing that they'll be looking for me as the week goes on.

This was my last view of them before I walked out the door...

Yeah, hard to not feel guilty about it all.