As I was sitting down to write this, Jenny just casually trapped a fly and ate it. And I'm like... WHY?!? YOU JUST HAD DINNER! Jenny may be fuzzy, adorable, and sweet. But she's also a fly-murdering psychopath who loves to kill. =sigh= I hope I'm not cleaning up fly-crusted vomit later tonight.

Yesterday I brought my work hard drive array home so I don't have to go into the office over the weekend. This resulted in Jake laying on the stairwell banister watching me work....

THEN after I start singing along with my music to him, this is what happens...

=sigh= Is my singing really THAT BAD? Apparently.

Cats. Amiright?

He can't even fake being interested in the guy who feeds him and gives him a home to sleep in!

My cats watch television with me.

Jenny more than Jake, but Jake will absolutely watch the screen if something there catches his interest.

Like me watching an episode of Ted Lasso for the hundredth time...

Jenny is more picky. The one thing that gives me odds of her tuning in to the television is playing Rick and Morty. As I've mentioned before, she absolutely loves Rick's voice. The other day I was getting caught up, and as soon as Rick started talking, Jenny walked from the kitchen to the living room...

Jenny was not pleased with the sexist dialogue, and had to give me a "look" to make sure I knew of her displeasure.

In other cat news... I am beginning to think that Jake suffers from narcolepsy. A couple of times now he has been walking away from me after getting pets and just... collapses asleep! At first I was mortified that he had collapsed dead. But nope... just sleeping...

Jenny, on the other hand, rarely walks away. She will let you give her pets for as long as you are willing to give her pets!

Especially in those hard-to-reach areas, like her armpits. Can cats even scratch there? I don't think they can unless they rub over something?

And, on that note, I really need to get out of bed and make breakfast.

The primary reason I built a catio is to allow my cats to go outside while keeping them safe. But another reason is to keep the local wildlife safe. Doing my best to make sure that birds and mice and other critters don't get murdered by my psychopathic felines.

It's mostly successful.

Three times a bird has made their way into the catio. Only once has this resulted in a fatality. No mice, moles, or other warm-blooded creatures have died.

Insects, on the other hand? Well... the catio doesn't do a very good job of protecting them at all. My cats just looooove to chomp down on whatever bugs are foolish enough to wander in. Which hasn't been a huge problem. Until now.

Now I have praying mantises waltzing in at an alarming pace. Last week one was challenging Jake to a fight after he got batted around for a bit...

I went back outside and kicked the mantis out of the catio three times! But the stupid, suicidal thing kept coming back. It's shocking how aggressive these things are! But, alas, the thing apparently came back a fourth time...

And then... here they come... again!

I kicked the thing back out but, of course, it came back in. This time both Jake and Jenny decided to have a go at it, so I had to rush right back outside...

I don't understand why this has suddenly become a problem. I rarely saw praying mantises the first five years I've lived here. Maybe it's the heat? I dunno.

What I do know is that any praying mantis looking to die should just head to my catio and have at it.

I am not home today... which means I spend every mealtime staring at my cats over the security cameras, trying to see if there's anything that looks wrong with them.

One of the earliest items I bought for my cats was kitty toothbrushes with kitty toothpaste. I had heard that teeth cleaning can be so severe on cats that they have to be put under in order for it to happen, so I wanted to start out with good dental hygiene from the beginning.

Neither one of them was having it.

They would happily lick the toothpaste off of the brush (I'm guessing it tastes like fish or chicken or some other food cats love)... but the minute I start to brush with it? Nope.

Which is why I was really excited to see that Arm & Hammer had a baking-soda-infused water additive that can help to keep a cat's teeth healthy. It wasn't terribly expensive, so I snapped it right up and started using it last weekend.

Fast-forward to yesterday morning when I was doing one of my twice-weekly cleanings of Jake and Jenny's water fountain and... "OH MY GAWD!!! IS THIS MOLD GROWING INSIDE THE WATER PUMP AND FILTER?!? GAAAAAHHH!!!!" Needless to say, I was freaked out. I immediately threw the pre-filter and the filter in the garbage. Then I scrubbed every piece of the fountain with vinegar. Then with soap. Then rinsed with hot water. Then cleaned it again! I was taking no chances that my cats were ingesting mold.

Then after getting the fountain put back together with fresh pre-filter and filter parts and rinsing it yet again with hot water... I filled it up and reached for the bottle of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Additive and...

Oh.

Apparently my fountain's filtration system works so amazingly well it is able to filter out an invisible quantity of baking soda from the water supply. Which is a good thing, I guess?

Oh well. I tried.

I really, really hope that my cats never have to be put under for a teeth cleaning. But it's not like I didn't try to help them avoid it.

Ugh. I'm so exhausted it feels like my brain is melting.

Jenny is quick to flash the "What in the hell do you think you're doing" look when you are petting her in a way she doesn't like. But she's also quick with the deepest, most earth-shaking purrs I've ever heard when you rub her the right way...

Holy cow, look at that face! That's the same face I'm making right now because I have to work this weekend and don't have time for blogging.

My cats may not be able to speak, but they definitely know how to communicate.

Jenny manipulates me with growing ease. She knows exactly how to meow to get me to give her belly rubs...

But also knows exactly how to tell me that I'm petting her the wrong way...

Jake isn't interested in telling me anything. He's more concerned with looking cute...

And just being cute...

Which is to say that they don't need to say anything at all.

THUMP. BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA. THUMP THUMP THUMP. THUMP. CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP.

This is what I hear each time I come from work. It's Jake jumping off the upstairs cat tower... running across my room. running down the hall... then running down the stairs. It's nice that he comes running to greet me each day for scratches, and it's something I look forward to.

Jenny is more cautious. She'll wait and make sure that Jake doesn't get eaten before she cautiously slinks downstairs. The difference being that she's completely silent.

The other day I came home and heard nothing.

It happens from time to time. Jake is having a particularly good sleep and doesn't feel like being interrupted. Or he's busy chewing away on Mufasa and that's more important than welcoming be back home.

How disappointing.

And then I heard him squawking. Worried that he might be sick or hurt, I went running to find him. Only to see this...

Not sick or hurt... lazy. He didn't want to run to me, he wanted me to run to him...

Eventually he tore himself away from Mufasa and came running after me when I plopped down on the couch. Say goodbye to my spleen...

Though he was nice enough to step over my balls, so that was nice.

Speaking of Mufasa...

Earlier this week Jake piled up two of his toys... then put Mufasa on top. Then sat there squawking (turn the volume up to hear it). I guess he wanted me to come look at it? I was working, so I yelled down for him to come to bed, which he did. But then I felt bad because he was obviously proud of what he accomplished and wanted to share it.

The next morning as I went downstairs to feed the cats their breakfast I was sure to tell Jake how proud I was. He didn’t care. He was over it and just wanted to be fed. Oh well. I tried.

I am too tired to blog.

But it's not like I have a choice, do I? Fortunately, it's Caturday.

That look you get when you cough while your cat was napping...

The reason your video game controller is always covered in cat hair might have something to do with your cat's addiction to video games...

My owners are so disappointed in me.

When I first bought my cat grass, it started turning brown almost immediately. So instead of spraying it with a little water as instructed, I started dumping water on it by the gallons. That stopped the brown from getting worse... but had the side-effect of causing the grass to grow quite long. The cats didn't seem to mind. They'd happily lay in it and roll around in it. Which is exactly what I bought it for in the first place...

Now that it's too hot out and the cats don't like to go out, I should probably just let the grass die... but I'm genuinely curious to know how long I can keep it alive. Then, when it starts getting cooler at the end of August maybe I can order more and better know how to take care of it this time around?

Worth a shot.

I should really know better.

And yet I never learn, because I keep ordering stuff through Kickstarter. I've only been really burned once where the people took the money and ran, but I was dubious at the start and "only" ended up losing $25 (which is still too much to lose, in my humble opinion, because I'm no Elon Musk). Out of all the projects I've backed, I've only been truly thrilled with about 10% of them. Another 20% were less than stellar. And the remaining 70% were scams or absolute garbage.

But, when it comes to taking care of my cats, I'm a total sucker, and ended up backing the "Kitty Spring" cat fountain an eternity ago. The idea of having multiple fountains around the house while I travel appealed to me, and I thought it was smart to find different approaches to the challenge of keeping my cats hydrated when I'm gone.

Turns out, I should have just stuck with a big bowl of water.

Or bought another ceramic fountain, because both my cats absolutely love that thing.

The first problem I encountered when I finally received my Kitty Spring was the size of the thing. For whatever reason I thought I'd be filling a 2-liter bottle... but it ended up being 1/4 that size. This thing is tiny.

The next problem is that it's just not that great of a design. If you don't have it on a perfectly level surface, then the water won't flow out of it like it's supposed to.

The other problem is that the dish with water in it is SO small and shallow that there's barely enough water in it to let the cats know they should drink from there.

And it's this last problem that ended up being so entertaining that it's almost worth the money I paid for a failed product! Jake was the first to drink from it. As he was drinking for that first time, the bottle made a GLUG! GLUG! GLUG! sound as water refilled the bowl that scared him.

So what did he do?

Jake attacked the thing. And even though it comes with a rubber base to hold it to the ground, the fountain is so small and light that it pops right out and spills water everywhere...

Jenny has taken a few drinks from it, but not enough to make it a source of water for her since she mostly ignores it.

Jake will drink from it sometimes, but also not enough to justify the $44 it cost me (seriously not worth it). He is no longer startled by the GLUG! GLUG! GLUG! sound... but he still beats up on it just for fun, spilling water everywhere.

AT LEAST I THOUGHT THAT'S WHAT WAS HAPPENING!

I was wrong.

The reason he smacks it around is because he's learned that doing so causes more water to come out! And I know this because I actually saw him demonstrate twice this past week. First he'll walk up to it. Then he'll start smacking the bottle around. Then he'll drink from the full dish instead of the meager amount of water that was there.

It's really genius when you stop to think about it.

There are two geniuses in my house. I'm growing increasingly aware that one of them is not me.