I'm trying to be smarter about my life, but I regularly fail. Take yesterday, for example. I had some vaccinations to get, and rather than getting them spaced out (the smart thing), I didn't want to take extra time off work and so I just got them all at once. Which will come as no surprise to my readers. I did my last colonoscopy without sedation so I wouldn't have to cancel an appointment that I booked afterwards. But anyway... I needed some allergy shots. I needed one of my vaccinations updated. And I wanted another COVID booster before an upcoming trip (Yeah, I know... this is #7 and I'm not dead yet! Maybe these things are safe after all! And effective because I =knock wood= haven't gotten COVID yet!). That should have been two appointments at least a week apart. But nope! I have two arms!

And what, exactly, does this have to do with Caturday?

Glad you asked!

I find that I don't use the laundry bags in my closet except to hold junk that should be elsewhere. They never get dirty laundry. I always take it downstairs with me after my morning shower. So I've decided to add another hanger bar. That way I don't have to put my clothes in two closets, they'll all fit into my one bedroom closet...

Oooooooh. Photoshop visual follows...

BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CATURDAY?!??

Okay... okay!

Despite feeling like I was run over thanks to stupidly getting all my shots at the same time, I decided to work on my closet before going to my class reunion. I cut the mounting board. I found the drywall studs. Then noticed that Jenny was glaring at me from the perch on the window. She was likely sleeping there and I woke her up...

But rather than vacuum up the dust, drill holes, then screw the board in place so I could add the bar... I put everything down and left.

I'll wait until after I get back and she's come downstairs for dinner.

Because as much as I would love to have my closet finished, I love my cats more. I don't intentionally upset them if I can help it... ever. And this closet thing can wait.

Happy Caturday!

The highlight of Jake and Jenny's day is when it's time to eat. Which I try to keep interesting for them by feeding them a few small meals throughout the day instead of one or two big meals. But anyway... out of the small meals they get, the two that are the most important are breakfast and dinner because that's when they get wet food.

To remind me about it, I have alarms that play on my HomePods. It's a triggering situation for my cats. They hear that alarm and start to go nuts because it signals their favorite times out of the day.

And lately I've been hyping it up for them.

The alarm goes off and I'm like "OH MY GOODNESS! OH MY DAYS! IT'S BREAKFAST TIME! JAKE! IT'S BREAKFAST TIME! WHERE'S JENNY? THERE SHE IS! JENNY, IT'S BREAKFAST TIME!!!" At first my cats were kind afraid of my ranting. But now it spurs them on. Jake will run to a scratching pad and start going to town, at which point I'll say "THAT'S RIGHT, JAKEY BEAR! TEAR THAT SHIT UP!!!

And then I run downstairs with them as they're at maximum hype.

At which point I regret my actions a little bit, because they're so hyped up that they have absolutely zero patience for me to dish up their breakfast. They want their food now!

Although... Jake and Jenny do crash hard after breakfast and dinner now...

Which means it's a lot easier for me to get some work done before heading into the office.

Jake, if you couldn't tell, is a big cat.

Not necessarily grossly obese... but big. Like he has Maine Coon in his genetic makeup or something. And, yes, he could stand to lose some pounds. Though he gets the same amount of food as his sister, who looks a third his size, so I don't think he's over-fed. The only extra food he gets is if his sister decides to not eat all her food.

But anyway...

This past week my cat food order arrived and the cardboard cap that was on the flat of wet food cans got dropped on the floor because my cats (all cats?) just love to sit in them.

Or, in Jake's case, lay in them.

Try to lay in them, rather...

To say that he was frustrated because he didn't fit is an understatement. He kept pushing and pushing and kicking and clawing trying to get himself inside that box. Then he squawked at me, but didn't seem to understand that there was nothing I could do about his situation.

Maybe I need to look for a larger box somewhere. Or build one.

Because my cats are nothing if not spoiled.

This morning I sifted through all the photos that I found on an abandoned backup drive. Most of which I never thought I'd see again after Apple lost my iCloud Drive data back in January. It was dumb luck that I even had the drive, yet alone was able to recover anything off it. Some of the photos were on my blog, but they were low-resolution. Now I had the originals back.

The most important ones to me were those of Jake and Jenny when they were little. I had most of the images backed up in multiple places, but there were a few sets that were only on iCloud Drive. Like this one...

How terrible would it be to have lost that?

Hope you have a backup strategy for your photos.

Jenny is afraid of everything. Including me. If I walk into the room too quickly and she can't gauge if I'm going to run up and attack her, she'll bail. Run out of the room and wait to see if it's safe to return.

Jake, on the other hand, will plop down on the floor at the bottom of the stairs and lay there, waiting for me to step over him. I've known this about him from very early on, so I'm always pretty careful when I'm not sure of where he is. Especially when I'm sitting at my desk, because he likes to lay behind my chair while waiting for me to finish...

Sometimes Jake's laying around is helpful. Like when my sister uses him as a kickstand instead of my arm...

Right now Jake is laying on the kitchen floor waiting for dinner to come. Guess he wants to be nearby so he has less distance to travel.

Jenny, whom I love more than potato salad, is turning into a cranky, bitter, judgmental creature. Which is to say that she's a cat. Whereas her brother is quite a bit more easygoing, she gets to be more of a demanding little princess every day. Which is fine by me, because the more of a personality she develops, the more I love her for it.

This past week Jenny was sitting next to me getting petted. Jake, experiencing sserious FOMO hopped up on the couch and climbed over her so he could sit on my lap and get petted also.

Jenny was furious.

She hissed and ran off.

Around ten minutes later I look up from my phone as I'm petting Jake and see Jenny sitting opposite staring at us...

But she wasn't staring. Not really...

Look at that face! She was glaring at us. Dang was she salty.

Then, last night, I was petting Jenny on my bed waiting for some laundry to finish drying. Again Jake decided that he wanted to lay on the bed too. He hopped up, flopped back on his back as he always does, which resulted in him rolling into Jenny, which she did not like one bit. I mean look at that face!

She did not like this disruption at all, even though I never stopped petting her. Eventually she got up and repositioned herself so that Jake wasn't touching her.

Maybe not a princess... probably more like a queen.

And her majesty was not pleased.

Jake absolutely kills me.

He's always been all about carrying his toys around, but he wants me to know it because he starts howling while carrying them now. Adorable. His toy box is in my office upstairs, so I'll hear him howling... then stop... then be howling... then stop... and so on. Then I'll go upstairs for something and see toys dropped around like...

In other Jake news... his snaggletooth, which was once an on-again off-again thing while he was sleeping, seems as though it's a permanent fixture now. Every time I see him sleeping, there it is...

He seems none the worse for wear, so I guess it's all good.

Despite the fact that I am doing so much better with my eyes lately, Jake still feels the need to watch over me.

Or maybe he doesn't actually care, but finds me to be a comfortable place to sleep somehow.

He's still wanting to take naps on top of me...

He's still snuggling up against me every night...

Meanwhile Jenny is still indifferent, as you can tell from her adorable little frowny face...

Speaking of Jenny, this past week she woke me up at 4:30am because she thought it was important for me to know that there were two birds fighting on the roof outside the window...

At which point she decided to fall asleep, leaving me wide awake...

Don't worry. Eventually Jake decided to join her...

I was never able to fall back asleep, which is typical.

My cats are not the clingy type. Jake likes to run and greet me when I get home from work so he can get petted. Jenny likes to be petted until I fall asleep at night. From time to time they'll want more attention than usual but, for the most part, they're happy to hang out with me... but at a distance.

The exception is when I'm sick or hurting.

Jake has a weird ability to sense this and, when he does, he's all over me. In these past weeks when I've been dealing with eye-related issues, he's been stuck to me like glue. When I'm trying to work...

Or trying to sleep...

Or watching television...

Or taking a nap...

I mean, it's nice to have the company, of course. But it's also nice to have my own space. After next week I'm hoping that my problems will start to resolve themselves and Jake will deem me suitably fit to go back to his normal routine.

The fact that my cats are such a small percentage of my size and yet occupy a far greater percentage of my bed is an irony that's not lost on me. And do you think that they care even a little bit that I have to struggle to find a place to sleep? The answer will not shock you. It's no.

Take this show from last night, for example...

Now, lest you think that the square-ish lump is my legs folded up, it's not. That's a pillow that Jenny was propped up against that I couldn't move or else she'd get mad (seen in green below). No, I'm barely on the bed at all, with my legs almost falling off (seen in red below)...

Now, the good news is that Jenny rarely wants to stick around after I go to bed. The minute I close my laptop and turn the lights off, she's running downstairs to sleep who-knows-where. So once she's gone I could move the pillow and move my legs on the other side of Jake where I have a little more room. He will be in that exact same spot when I wake up in the morning. At which time he'll let me know he's hungry.

Cats have got to be the most narcissistic creatures on the planet (after humans, of course). The world really is all about them. And when it's not, they make it that way.