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.

Nothing makes my cats want to go outside in the catio more than when I don't let them go outside in the catio because there's too much smoke in the air for little kitty lungs.

Seriously. Jake acts like he's being tortured. Jenny walks around the house meowing at full volume to let her frustration be known. And it doesn't end there. They are both constantly hanging around me. The minute I head to bed, they are there. And they stay there until morning.

Most times they just want to lay there...

Other times they demand belly rubs...

But sometimes they manage to entertain themselves without my involvement...

At least until something like this happens. At which time I will say "JAKE! COME BACK HERE AND FIX YOUR SISTER'S EAR!" Except he won't, so I have to get involved...

I really hope that the smoke dies down enough that I can open up the catio again.

I've mentioned a few times how my cats have become increasingly annoyed by my existing in their house, and far more demanding of my time.

This peaked last week when I was upstairs in bed and heard Jenny screaming downstairs. It was so unnerving that I leapt out of bed and went running down to find out if she was hurt. But nope. She was just sitting at the bottom of the stairs demanding that I come down to pet her or feed her (or more likely both).

I pet her for a minute, then told her to follow me upstairs, which she did.

But since I came running once, she did it again on Thursday night... then again last night! Both times I just yelled down to her to come up. Which she did. But she was not happy about it.

In other cat news, I saw this and was immediately struck about the accuracy of it all...
 

Yeah. Though I'd argue that every social media platform is a stunningly safe space for cats.

My cats are at home while I am across the mountains.

They have robots to feed them, robots to keep their litter box clean, and fountains to keep their drinking water clean and cool. There's cameras and alarms and sensors to keep them safe and let me know if there's any trouble.

But all that doesn't matter.

They are 2-1/2 hours away being mad because I'm not there to cater to them.

But don't worry. They'll let me know when I get home.

Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans!

This is an awful day for pet owners, because the fireworks will be traumatizing cats, dogs, and the rest all night. I think that they've been banned here this year because they don't want another fire raging in the heat we've got going on, but that never stops everybody. There's always people who will ignore it all and fire them off anyway...

When I bought my home, the previous tenant left a Speed Queen industrial washer and dryer. I was going to replace them with something cool and modern, but a friend told me I would be a fool to throw out tough, reliable, industrial models for new tech garbage where the electronics are always failing and they break at the drop of a hat. And boy am I glad that I heeded my friend's advice. Those old models just keep going no matter what I throw at them. Their capacity is huge. Clothes get really clean (the mounds of cat hair are no problem). And they are truly built like a tank.

Because I can wash such huge loads of clothing at a time, I often go weeks without washing to save money. And that was the case when I finally washed this past week. I had baskets of clothes sitting out to take up to my room.

Enter my cats.

They were very interested in the piles of clean clothes.

Jake decided he wanted to lay on top of one of the baskets, but it was piled too high. So I sat and watched him grab a single sock... walk across the room... drop it... then go back to get another sock. This time he took a few steps, decided it would be too much work to empty the basket, dropped the sock, then fell asleep on the couch.

Jenny, on the other hand, sniffed around all the baskets for a while, then went upstairs to sleep on my bed.

She could have taken some laundry with her, but did not.

My cats are weird in the best ways.

A couple days ago I was giving Jenny belly rubs when she suddenly flopped over and trapped my hand. Just when I accepted the fact that I wouldn't be able to go to work, Jake swooped in and licked her head as a distraction and I was able to escape when she twisted around to give him a better licking angle...

Then Jake decided to use his sister's butt as a pillow, which thrilled her to no end, as you can imagine...

But it was either that or Jenny would have to find a way to earn money so she can live the excessive lifestyle that she's become accustomed to.

Jenny alternates between acting like a cranky old cat and a little princess kitten, and there's not much in-between.

But in both cases, she's complaining a lot and being demanding. Which is apparently her default. If she wants something, she complains until she gets what she wants. If she's upset at a situation, she complains until it's changed. If she is angry at something, she complains until it's been removed.

Take Thursday night. I was working in bed. Jenny complained until I pet her. Then I wasn't petting her like she wanted so she complained until I figured out what she wanted. Then I needed both hands to type and she grabbed my hand... and complained...

And if I start pulling away anyway, she digs in her claws.

I blame myself.

I've never told these cats "no" except when they jumped on the kitchen counters. And now they don't know the meaning of the word.

As I mentioned a few posts back, I ended up ordering a new Nerf gun. My intent was to shoot darts for the cats to chase. I thought it would be something fun for them.

So I take it out of the package, and shoot a dart from my kitchen... expecting that it will end up in the dining room, which is not so far away. Instead the dart flies the entire length of my home and smacks into the rear window. I was more than a little shocked. Isn't this a kid's toy? How many people have lost an eye because they didn't gauge the amount of force those darts get shot.

But anyway... I never picked up the two darts I fired (it had to be two because I wanted to verify that the first dart wasn't a fluke). And Jake noticed...

So maybe the Nerf gun will end up entertaining the cats anyway.

But carefully.