I think of our cats as tiny humans, and I constantly have to remind myself they're not

Ever since Cheddar the cat entered our lives a year ago, this scene has played out hundreds of times.

Cheddar (the orange cat above, lower right) will be sitting in the living room minding his own business, when suddenly calico Ginny, one of our two girl cats, will come charging at him. The two will tussle for a few seconds, hisses will be exchanged, then order will be restored.

When this happens, I give Ginny a stern talking-to. "Why would you do that?" I demand of her. "Stop being a bully. Leave Cheddar alone! You're mean."

Then I pause for a second and realize a few things:

• Ginny does not generally understand English, outside of the word "treats" and her own name.
  
  
• Ginny is acting on instinct. She is not "mean" by nature.
  
  
• These lectures of mine never seem to have an effect, and she is likely to repeat this behavior an hour later.

NOTE: Cheddar is not entirely innocent in all of this. Maybe it's because he's fed up with being attacked, but increasingly, he is the aggressor when he and Ginny or he and Molly square off.

Other than the occasional nose scratch, no one ever gets hurt in these confrontations. But I always feel like Cheddar, a cat who was plucked from the mean streets of Wickliffe by our daughter Melanie, deserves some peace and quiet.

Then again, he's an animal. Does he even know what "peace and quiet" is? Isn't he built to handle this kind of thing?

Regardless of how much we love them, the fact is that our cats, as domesticated as they are, are cats. They have instincts that make them act in ways that, while unpleasant to us, are perfectly natural to them.

Overall, they seem pretty happy with their lives.

This tendency of mine to treat them like people also extends to their facial expressions. Or at least what I interpret as their facial expressions, because again, I read their faces the way I would read people's faces.

Which is also a mistake. Cheddar, for instance, has what Terry calls "Resting Sad Face." He always looks like a forlorn little human child, but he looks that way even when he's sitting on my lap purring and is clearly very content.

So while I still don't like it when the cats fight, as I said, no permanent damage is done and they all seem fairly happy with their lot in life.

Of course, I would know for sure if they stopped being so stubborn and learned to speak English.

I forego a comfortable sleeping position so that our cat Molly can slumber peacefully on our bed

 

Having grown up a dog owner, I find cats to be very quirky. Or at least the ones we have are.

Take our kitty Molly, also known as "Fat Molly," "Floofy Molly," "Fat Floofy," or any number of other names that describe her two defining physical characteristics:

• She is somewhat obese.
• She is also a longhaired feline, with an emphasis on "long."

Molly is, like the cat in the stock photo above, colored black and white. But she's much larger than the cat pictured there, which means she tends to take up a considerable amount of room wherever she decides to park herself.

This is a significant fact for me, because as it turns out, Molly often likes to sleep near me.

What happens is that Terry and I will get into bed and spend a few minutes scrolling on our phones before turning out the light (which I realize you're not supposed to do, but I never seem to have much trouble falling asleep). Molly will often jump onto the bed and plop herself right on top of me as we do this.

She will then proceed to knead my belly with her front paws while suckling the bedspread, as if she were a kitten nursing from her mother.

We got Molly when she was very small, and the assumption has always been that she was separated from her mom much too early and has thus carried mommy issues with her to this day.

Anyway, getting to one of Molly's quirks, once we turn out the light, she will immediately jump from the bed and leave the room. I don't know why she does this, but at some point during the night she usually returns and jumps back onto my side of the bed.

Terry says she often wakes up in the middle of the night and sees me with my legs hanging off the side of the bed so as not to disturb Molly, who is sleeping where my feet would normally be.

I don't do this consciously, but apparently it's important to me that any cat who wants to sleep on or next to me not be disturbed.

Which is fine except for the fact that it diminishes the quality of my own sleep somewhat. I would very likely sleep better if I kept my legs under the covers with my body straight, rather than curled almost in an "L" shape because God forbid I nudge Molly and she leaves.

That cat really should appreciate everything I do for her, which includes not only accommodating her preferred sleeping spot but also giving her fresh food and water every day and cleaning up the litter boxes after her. Then there are the pets I give her throughout the day along with occasional tasty food scraps from the dinner table.

She loves me, I know, but I'll be honest and say I still don't think Ms. Chonks is being sufficiently grateful for all of this.

I told Terry, "No more cats!" And then along came Cheddar...

I became a cat person only because I married a cat person.

Having grown up with dogs, I didn't know much about caring for felines until the spring of 1992 when Terry and I got ourselves a little kitten that we named Alex.

This was during my three months of bachelorhood after I moved out of my parents' house and into the house on East 300th Street that Terry and I bought before we got married. Alex and I lived there alone until June, when Terry moved in following our wedding.

I quickly learned that cats are self-sufficient, territorial, and depending on their personality, varying degrees of affectionate.

In the three-plus decades we've been married, Terry and I have had a range of cats, including a long stretch in which we owned five of them. Over time, I became the one who fed them all every day and cleaned their litter boxes.

Thus, while I was sad when our cats Fred, George and Charlie all died within about 15 months of each other, there was also a sense of relief that morning cat duty might someday be lifted from my shoulders.

At that point we had just two kitties, our girls Ginny and Molly. I was fine with this arrangement and was always the first one to say no when someone suggested we take in a stray or claim a kitten in need of a home.

Meanwhile, our daughter Melanie had moved out of the house, and she was building a little cat army of her own. That included an orange stray who started hanging around her place last winter, and who she would regularly feed and pet.

She eventually took him into her home and named him Cheddar. She loved Cheddar, and with good reason. He's a good cat.

The problem was that one of Mel's other kitties, who generally hates the world and everything in it, took to tormenting Cheddar. They couldn't even be in the same room together, which forced Mel to keep Cheddar locked up in a bathroom while she figured out what to do.

I didn't want any more cats, but I also didn't want Mel taking Cheddar to the Humane Society. One night she came to our house for dinner and mentioned him, and I went ahead and said what was on everyone's mind.

"Oh, just bring him over here," I said. "He can live with us."

And so she did. And so he does. It took a little while for Ginny and Molly to accept him, and even then, at best, they tolerate him.

But Cheddar has been a big hit with the three humans in our house. He's affectionate, inquisitive, entertainingly vocal, and fun to watch whenever he goes into kitten mode and starts playing with whatever he can find on the floor (a hair tie, a cat toy, a piece of string, a dust ball, etc.)

So now we have three cats again. It's not five, and I don't intend for it ever to be five again. Or even four, for that matter.

We're sticking with the ones we have. And once they're gone, no more.

And this time...I mean it.

Smaller pets are eternally babies, even when they're getting on in years

 

The feline in the photo above is Ginny, the oldest of our three cats and also – by a considerable margin – the smallest in stature.

Ginny (named after Ginny Weasley from the Harry Potter series) joined our family nine years ago this month. According to one online source I found, this makes her about 52 in human years.

Not a senior citizen, by any means, but a lot closer to old-cathood than she is to kittenhood.

Yet I still often think of Ginny as our youngest simply because she's so small. She just seems very kitten-like.

By the way, it's commonly thought that calico cats like Ginny are smaller than other cats simply by reason of being calicos. That's not true, though. It turns out calicos can range from small to large. The reason calicos tend to be smaller is that 99.9% of them are females, and female cats are naturally smaller than males.

Whatever the reason, Ginny will seem forever young any time she is near her two siblings: fat floofy Molly and svelte-yet-undeniably-masculine Cheddar.

When those three are physically close to one another (which isn't often, given their mutual distrust), Ginny always looks like the little kid tagging along with the big kids.

We are in a period of relatively good cat health in our house right now. We lost three of our kitties in one 16-month period between February 2022 and June 2023, so it's nice to have everyone looking and feeling good, especially when I realize how much we pay in vet bills when they're not looking or feeling good.

Still, whenever I see Ginny and realize she's going to be a decade old next fall, I remember what it's like when they start going downhill.

Not at all fun.

Which is why I choose to continue fooling myself and believing Ginny is in fact a kitten who will live forever.

It's better that way.

Bringing another cat into the house is way more complicated than I remembered it

 

That's Cheddar soaking up some sun near our front door.

For many years we owned five cats. This was just how it was, and I spent the first few minutes of every morning feeding them, getting them fresh water, scooping out their litter boxes, and ensuring they were all present and accounted for.

Then our three boys (Fred, George and Charlie) each succumbed to various feline diseases in one 16-month period, and suddenly we found ourselves down to two kitties in the house: our girls Ginny and Molly.

As much as I miss Fred, George and Charlie, I have to admit I've enjoyed the relative ease of taking care of only two cats vs. five. All along I've said that as soon as these two ladies pass on – something I hope doesn't happen for quite a while – we would start living cat-free.

No more food bowls, no more litter boxes, no more clumps of fur blowing randomly around the house.

You know where this is going.

A few months ago, my daughter Melanie found a sweet, affectionate orange cat living outside her house. She started to feed and pet him, and the next thing you knew, Mr. Orange was living inside her home along with the two cats she already owned.

This would have been fine except that the two existing felines weren't especially nice to Orange. They made his life miserable, which is all the more sad considering what a nice little guy he is. He loves receiving pets, being around people, and just generally loving everyone.

Mel didn't know what to do. She wanted to find him a new home where he could live in relative peace and quiet, but there were no obvious candidates outside of her family.

Again, you know where this is going.

I had already resigned myself to the fact that Cheddar, as she had named him, would be coming to live with us, even before the formal request was made. Our oldest daughter Elissa offered to take him, but it was agreed that we could offer Cheddar the best home.

So one Saturday Mel brought him over. He lived in our master bathroom for a few days while he got acclimated to his new surroundings.

Actually, him living in the bathroom was done mainly to allow Ginny and Molly ample time to get used to his smell and accept the fact that he would be their new brother.

I read online how integrating a new cat into an existing cat family should be a gradual process. One thing we did, for example, was to feed the girl cats treats on one side of a bedroom door while Cheddar was getting his own treats on the other.

This not only put them in close proximity, the treats also (theoretically) created a positive association for them with their mutual smells.

Slowly we started giving Cheddar more freedom. When the girls first encountered him visually, their reactions were predictable: Light but insistent hissing and facial expressions that clearly conveyed the message, "We don't know what you are, but you are not welcome."

As I write this in mid-April, this is still the state of affairs, though I think Ginny and Molly are coming to the realization that Ched isn't going anywhere and they need to get used to the idea.

Who knows? Maybe in time they'll become pals.

All I know is that I envisioned this process happening much quicker and going much more smoothly. We've done the cat integration thing before, but apparently I've forgotten how reluctant they can be to welcome new companions of their own species.

We had a much easier time when we were bringing home new (human) babies every two years back in the 90s and early 2000s. At least back then the kids didn't hiss at their new brothers and sisters.

The family text chat group: Misplaced mail, memories of years past, and endless cat photos

We have a family text group that includes all seven of us plus two significant others (Mark and Lyndsey). It is active almost every day and is used for a variety of purposes.

One recent conversation, for example, centered on Chloe's ongoing attempts to convince the post office that a former resident of her house is, in fact, a former resident and no longer lives there. Several times she has taken items intended for this person and written "Return to Sender" and "Not at This Address" on them, but mail for the previous occupant keeps on coming.

This was followed up by texts from other family members with suggestions on how to handle the situation, and one threat from Jared to alert the authorities that Chloe is committing mail fraud if she starts simply throwing these misaddressed cards and letters away.

He was kidding (I think).

Almost every day it's something different in the chat group, but there are at least three common types of activity you'll find there:

(1) Cat content: We are a cat family and my kids like to share photos of their current cats as well as the cats with which they grew up. I enjoy all of this because it's sometimes the only way I can keep tabs on my grand-kitties. (As you can see above, the official photo of the text group is an old image of Fred, George and Charlie, three of our former cats who have each moved on to their greater good, as my friend Kate Tonti would say.)

(2) Random memories: These conversations will often begin with one kid texting something like, "Thinking about the times Lissy and I used to sit at the computer at the old house and play Harry Potter." Then they will all go back and forth about the details of the game that have stuck with them. We also sometimes get memories of stuff we wouldn't let them do when they were little that their friends were allowed to do. There's always some bitterness there.

(3) Big announcements: Suddenly one child or another will text, "Attention everyone, I have a new job," or some such off-the-cuff piece of important news. Everyone then celebrates through congratulatory messages, "heart" and "exclamation point" reactions, and the occasional funny GIF. Twenty years ago, conveying this news would have involved separate phone calls to parents and siblings. Now it's just a single 7-second text. I'm not sure which is better.

Gotta go, Melanie just sent a great picture of two of her cats standing on their hind legs looking out the front door. <heart emoji>

I'm not the only one who uses this app every day, right?

The most-used apps on my phone are the ones you would probably expect: Messages (for texts), Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, ESPN, etc.

I also spend quite a bit of time  playing a Yahtzee game I've had on there for years.

Much further down the list, in terms of actual minutes in use, is the built-in iPhone "Reminders" app. I am actively engaged with it maybe 3 minutes total each day.

Yet it is, far and away, the app that has the most positive impact on my life.

"Reminders" does exactly what you think it does. It reminds you of various events, tasks and occasions of which you feel you need reminding.

For example, these are some of the recurring reminders I've set up and how often they pop up on my phone to jog my memory:

• "Feed Cats" - Every day at 5:30pm. I feed them first thing in the morning out of deeply ingrained habit. But I sometimes miss the evening feeding when I get home from the office, often because I'm rushing around getting ready to go out and announce a game or some other nighttime activity. This reminder ensures our two feline girls don't starve.
  
  
• "Blog Post" - Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8:00am. This reminds me that a new post has just gone up on my blog and I need to make sure the link gets shared on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
  
  
• "Begin Church Newsletter" - Every 15th of the month. A year or so ago, I took over compiling the monthly PDF newsletter recapping all of the relevant news and events for our church. The newsletter usually goes out near the end of the month, so I begin putting each edition together two weeks earlier.
  

Right now there are also six one-off reminders in there that include reducing the price of the Kindle version of my book "5 Kids, 1 Wife" to 99 cents for a special promotion I'm doing with RobinReads.com, asking someone for photos to go with an article I wrote for our school alumni newsletter, and updating the resume/log I keep of all of my sports public address announcing gigs.

I'm not saying I would forgot all of these things if it weren't for the Reminders app, but enough of them would go by the wayside if I tried remembering them on my own that having Reminders is a life-saver.

The best part is that I don't have to type anything on the tiny iPhone keyboard to set a reminder. All I have to do is summon good old Siri and tell her, "Hey Siri, remind me Thursday morning at 10am to fill the tires in my car," and she does. Just like that.

As I grow older and somewhat more forgetful, I anticipate being increasingly dependent on Reminders and Siri, my faithful electronic friends.

That's assuming, of course, I remember to set all the reminders I need in the first place.

He was my friend

Last night we lost our cat Fred. He had been very sick and was scheduled to be put to sleep this afternoon, but he decided to go on his own.

This is not especially remarkable, I know. It happens thousands of times every day in homes, veterinarians' offices and animal shelters around the world. We're certainly not the first people to go through it.

But that doesn't make it any easier. There's nothing mundane or routine about losing someone who has been part of your life for a long time, whether they're human, feline, canine, rodent, bird, etc.

Fred and his brother George have been members of our family for 14 1/2 years. We got them from the animal shelter in 2007 when our kids were all 13 and younger. Terry and I went out that day saying we were going to get a single female cat, and instead we came home with these two snow white goofballs.

At some point, and I really can't say when it was, Fred decided I was his human. He got along with everyone in the house – every human anyway...I don't think he ever really liked another cat besides George – but for whatever reason, he loved me most.

For years, Fred would jump into bed at night and lay right up against me. He was gone every morning when I woke up, but most of the time when I was falling asleep, he was right there.

When I had Lyme Disease in 2012 and was laid up for the better part of a couple of weeks, he spent most of his time in bed with me.

He would purr (loudly) for anyone willing to pet him, but he always seemed to find an extra degree of volume for me.

In some ways, Fred lived his life in perpetual angst. A lot of that had to do with the other cats who came into our home after him (Charlie, Ginny and Molly, along with the now-gone Bert). But he had his brother, with whom he often snuggled in the winter months so that both would be warm. Together, Fred and George got through everything life threw at them.

There were a few times over the years when we thought we had lost Fred, including once less than a year into his time with us when we were going to put him down before Terry discovered a wad of dental floss wrapped so far around the back of his tongue that the vet had completely missed it.

Suffice it to say, he went through all nine of his lives and probably a few more.

He started to develop urinary tract issues over the past couple of years, and it got to the point that he had to sleep in the basement storage room at night because he couldn't be trusted not to pee in random places.

A few times he started peeing blood, and each time the vet would give us antibiotics. The blood would eventually clear up, but I'm not sure the medicine had anything to do with it.

We had it all but confirmed yesterday that Fred had some sort of cancer. Could be bladder, could be kidney, who knows? He had so much fluid in his abdomen that it was difficult to see other organs on the x-ray the vet took, which we're told is a pretty good indicator of cancer in a cat.

In the last couple of weeks, he had been lethargic and not eating, and the bloody urine had come back in full force. He was miserable, and there's no doubt it was his time. Putting him down would have been the right thing, had he not beaten us to the punch.

Because even when it's hard, that's what you do for your friend.

To those who don't have pets or who have never been especially close to an animal, it probably sounds silly to talk about a cat as your "friend." After all, apart from his very expressive meows, I did most of the talking in our relationship. There wasn't a lot of dialogue there.

And yet somehow I think there was. I loved him and he loved me, and that was pretty much all that needed to be said or understood.

You know the day will come when a pet will be gone, but you're never quite ready.

I wasn't even sure how to say goodbye. I think he already knew I was a big fan of his, but I told him so anyway, just to make sure.

A proper sendoff is the least I could give the poor guy.

After all, he was my friend.

Our cats are lucky I love them

 

We have five cats, and I suppose I am more involved in their care and maintenance than anyone else in the family. It just sort of happened that way over the years, to the point that it's difficult to imagine doing anything other than feeding them and scooping out their litter boxes every day when I first wake up.

Contrary to popular belief when it comes to cats, they are all affectionate to one degree or another. They seem grateful for the easy life they live (at least as far as cats can be grateful), though there are times when they clearly take this as nothing more than their proper due.

I've generally been OK with that, but the three boys are trying my patience as they age.

The other night/morning, for instance, Charlie woke us up at 4:30am making a strange sound. Terry got out of bed and discovered he had a mouse in his mouth. I'm pretty sure the mouse was dead – that, or he was doing a bang-up job of playing dead – so I grabbed it in a paper towel, took it outside in the pouring rain, and flung it into the grass.

Then there's Fred, whose urinary tract issues are relatively under control, but only through daily effort on our part and not-inconsiderable investment in vet bills and prescription medicine. I've not cleaned up a puddle of Fred pee for a week or two, and I'm of course happy about that, but the total amount of his urine I have sopped up over the years would fill a large backyard swimming pool.

I apologize for the nauseating image, but it's true.

There are regular piles of nasty cat puke to clean up, some of which fall to me and others of which various family members (and here I'm thinking mainly of Terry) take on themselves to address.

Add to this Charlie's constant need to assert his alpha status by tormenting the other cats, plus the shedding, plus the cost of specialty food for Fred and regular food for the other four, plus the need to keep certain doors closed so that cats don't go in there and deposit a random biological substance on the floor, and...well, it's a lot.

Pet ownership done right is never easy, no matter what sort of animal you own. But the cats know all they have to do is present themselves to me for petting, and then loudly purr once I touch them, and all is forgiven.

I am an eternal sucker.

With gainful employment on the horizon, I need to get back to my 5am wake-up time

It is rare that anyone in the house is awake before me. Even over these last couple of months of not having a job, "sleeping in" for me is when I don't roll out of bed until after 6am

I have always been an early riser, and presumably I will always be an early riser.

Still, my current schedule, while not exactly what you would call "decadent," won't do once I start work at Goodyear next week. I need to get back to setting that tried-and-true 5am alarm.

I could get up later than that, but I'm not willing to sacrifice any part of my morning routine, which will generally look like this on days I'm in the office:

5am-5:30am: Get up, get dressed for exercise, get the cats fresh food and water, scoop their litter boxes, sweep around those litter boxes

5:30am-6:10am: Exercise, cool down

6:10am-6:30am: Shower, get dressed (only 20 minutes...this is the advantage of being a 51-year-old man)

6:30am-6:50am: Eat breakfast, scan the papers

6:50am-7:00am: Brush teeth, get ready, get out the door

7:00am-7:45am: Drive to work

7:45am-8:00am: Get in, get to my desk, get coffee, and get going

Right now Goodyear staff are only in the office two days a week, and that arrangement is likely to last several months while they figure out what their workplace model is really going to look like. I could potentially sleep in a bit on work-from-home days, though I'm still likely to be up at 5:00 and maybe exercise a while longer, or take some extra time to empty the dishwasher, start laundry, etc.

I know many of you get up much earlier than 5am, and many are up, shall we say, significantly later in the morning. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting back into more of a rigid schedule.

Are there biological substances to be cleaned up somewhere in the house? That would be Dad’s job.

Somewhere along the way, probably dating back to the mid-90s when we lived in our old house, it became my job (and almost exclusively my job) to clean up any and all bodily fluids and excretions deposited in inappropriate places.

You would assume I’m talking about pet messes, and I am. But human accidents also qualify. One time, when one of our children was very young, he/she stood at the top of our stairs (still clearly asleep), said the words “I can’t take it anymore,” and proceeded to pee in a manner that the urine ran down the first several of the carpeted stairs.

Terry cleaned up the child, I cleaned up the carpet.

It’s not that I’m any better at this task than anyone else, mind you. I’m just more willing to literally get my hands dirty, I guess.

This has all become more relevant in recents weeks as we have undertaken various home renovations, from a new basement floor to redoing our master bathroom.

Anyone who has ever endured home improvement projects knows a certain amount of chaos is inevitable. Your life and your routines get turned on their ear for a time, which is fine when it comes to the humans in the house.

Our five cats, however, don’t take change well. Or at least the older few don’t.

The result has been that Fred, my longtime feline companion, has taken to peeing in places that are decidedly not his litter box. I’ve stepped in and/or cleaned up more cat pee in the last few weeks than probably the last several years combined.

We’ve tried almost everything you can do to get him to stop, but as of this writing, we’re leaning toward a solution that has worked in the past with Fred. It’s likely we’ll be locking him up in our basement storage room for a week or so with his special urinary tract food, water, and a litter box so that he can retrain himself around where and where not to pee.

I imagine this will go a long way toward solving the problem, but I’m sad at the idea of putting Fred in kitty prison for a week because, you know, he’s my buddy. We spend a lot of time together, and I know the days of his confinement will be nothing but misery for him.

But then the stench of cat pee fills my nostrils again and I become resolute. Fred, you are hereby sentenced to a week in The Hole. Your only hope is to remember that we buy that expensive Arm & Hammer kitty litter every few weeks for a reason, my friend.

UPDATE 5/16/21: Since this was written, Fred did spend the better part of two weeks in the storage room, and the messes stopped. He also went to the vet and was diagnosed with a thyroid condition that likely contributed to the peeing problem. He is now on a day-release program (he only spends nights in cat jail) and is doing well, and has just started a course of medicine that should help. Go Fred!

I love our white cats, but...

I did not grow up having heard of a lint roller, a genius device without which I now could not live.

It has become an indispensable part of my life owing to a decision Terry and I made way back in September 2007.

We went to the local humane society with the intention of bringing home a female cat, preferably a calico. Instead, we returned with two white male cats, whom we named after the Weasley twins from Harry Potter, Fred and George.

Happily, these two guys are still with us as they approach the ripe old age of 14. They are the oldest of our five cats and pretty much fixtures in our house.

Fred, in particular, is my buddy. He has slept at my side most every night since joining the family, and is just overall a good guy (if a bit overweight and off-puttingly fragrant at times).

As I type this post, I'm sitting in the computer chair in our room after George just spent time laying in it. I am wearing black pants.

The moment I get up, I guarantee you my butt will be covered in highly visible white cat hair.

Every article of clothing I own eventually gets covered in white cat hair. You don't notice it on light-colored garments, of course, but it really stands out on the dark stuff.

So I'm constantly lint-rollering my clothes, at least the parts of myself I can easily get to. There are almost always at least a few of these white hairs on my back.

It is in some way a small price to pay for two guys who have given us many years of love and joy, and hopefully many more to come. But if I had a nickel for every time someone pointed out the white cat hair on my clothes, well, I could probably buy a ticket for a first-run movie.

And nowadays, that's saying something.

Our cats Fred and George are getting old. I hate going through this again.

Fred and George (actually, from left to right, George and Fred) not long after we got them in 2007

In addition to having five children, Terry and I also have five cats.

I have written about them before. There are enough of them that it's rare to be in a room of our house without at least one cat joining you, if not more.

Terry bought a tiny picnic table for squirrels (that's a 100% true sentence) to which she attaches ears of corn for our backyard squirrels to eat. When one of them comes up on the deck to partake of this corn, some or all of our cats will congregate at the back door to stare at it intently.

The only one who seems like he could take or leave the activity of squirrel watching is Fred. Fred and George are our white twin brother cats, and they will turn 14 this May.

The way I describe them these days is that they are both, in their own ways, starting to look bedraggled. That's a strong word in general, and it's a very apt one for Fred and George.

As I've mentioned, Fred chose me as his person some years ago. For most of the past decade and a half, he has slept beside me at night. He comes into the bathroom when I'm taking a shower, and he will start purring when I come near him, even before I actually pet him.

A quick Google search suggests that the average indoor cat lives 13 to 17 years. We are now within that window of time for Fred and George, and I'm seeing signs of decline in both.

Fred walks more gingerly down the basement steps than he used to. He has always had a bad habit of licking himself raw in certain places, but now he has prominent bald patches on both his head and his back.

The other morning I went down to the basement for my daily litter box maintenance and found Fred peeing on the floor right next to the litter box. I was not pleased.

There are other things, but suffice it to say that our two oldest cats are a lot closer to the end of the line than the beginning of it.

In some ways that's OK. It's just the way of things. But I hate this process. We take care of them the best we know how, but this will all inevitably end in a sad moment at the vet's office. I hope that moment is still several years away for Fred and George, but it does cross my mind more often these days.

Pet owners know what I'm talking about. When they're such a big part of your life, losing them hurts far more than you would think. It also makes me reluctant to get more pets in the future, but we'll cross that particular bridge when we come upon it.

For now, I'm going to go pet Fred and listen to his abnormally loud purr. It's the least I can do for an old friend.

Here's the scouting report on our cats

We have five cats. I grew up with dogs, but I immediately became a cat person when I got married because...well, that's just what happens. One person's pet preferences end up dominating.

Anyway, if I were a scout looking to draft some cats, here's how I think the five in our house would grade out (in descending age order):

NAME: Fred (aka, Fat Fred)

AGE: 13 1/2

ALLY: His brother George (see below)

STRENGTHS: Very loving to a small group of people he likes, chiefly me

WEAKNESSES: Obese, slow-moving, mostly skittish; lacks courage, intelligence, and self-confidence

OUTLOOK: Fred ruled the roost in our house for his first 2 1/2 years here, then Charlie came along. He has been slowly moving down the pecking order ever since. His heft and occasional urinary tract problems do not bode well for a healthy future, though he has lost some weight the last few years and eats special food for the pee problems. Classic beta male.

NAME: George

AGE: 13 1/2

ALLY: His brother Fred

STRENGTHS: Loyal and affectionate

WEAKNESSES: Possible brain defect; that thing under his right eye that never goes away.

OUTLOOK: As Fred goes, so does George. Which means he will live out his years in subordination to the other cats.

NAME: Charlie

AGE: 10

ALLY: None, nor does he need any

STRENGTHS: Dominant personality, purebred Lynx Point Siamese (we're told)

WEAKNESSES: Seldom affectionate, largely aloof; he'll beg for food, but he doesn't need you and he knows it

OUTLOOK: Charlie showed up in our backyard one September evening as a 7-week-old kitten. We have no idea where he came from, especially given the fact that he's such an attractive purebred. Charlie will rule this house every second until he takes his last breath.

NAME: Ginny

AGE: 5 1/2

ALLY: None, though she used to be best friends with the now-deceased Bert. We have encouraged an alliance with Molly, the other female cat, but neither is especially interested.

STRENGTHS: Beautiful tabby cat; very affectionate, though she reserves that affection almost exclusively for the men in the house.

WEAKNESSES: Unidentified anxiety disorder that causes her to pick up socks in her mouth and move them randomly around the house, all while making a strange noise. Repeatedly betrays Terry, the person who loves her most in the world.

OUTLOOK: She spends a lot of time in Jared's room and he spoils her, but once he moves out, well...things may turn grim.

NAME: Molly

AGE: About 3 1/2

ALLY: Occasionally teams with Charlie to wreak havoc, but she mostly annoys him.

STRENGTHS: Wicked front claw game; increasingly affectionate as she realizes the pleasures of having her butt scratched.

WEAKNESSES: Kind of fat and getting bigger (you can't tell in this picture), cannot stand being held, dealing with anger issues.

OUTLOOK: One day in the next decade or so, Molly and Ginny will be the only cats left. She needs to chill out and make friends with her sister if she wants to enjoy her later years.

When your pets suffer from mental illness

We have a cat named George who is very special. And by "special" I don't mean unique and wonderful and precious so much as "should be in some sort of feline assisted living facility."

Everyone in the house agrees that George has a problem, but none of us agree on his diagnosis. One daughter thinks he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, while another believes he may be autistic. I can't say exactly where he falls on the spectrum, though I know something is not right with George.

For one thing, he's pretty slow on the uptake, at least in relation to our other three cats. This doesn't make him any less valuable or less lovable; in fact, it makes him far more entertaining to us.

I actually have a long history of pets with mental illness. Growing up, we had a dog named Bootsie (Or was it "Bootsy" like Bootsy Collins? I don't think there was ever an official ruling on the spelling of her name.) Bootsie/Bootsy had a big knot on top of her head, which my dad believed was some sort of brain growth that made her...different.

Later on, I owned a hamster whom I called Ariel who had extreme anger issues. She seemed pretty lovable in the store, but once I got her home, it was nothing but teeth and rage with that little rodent.

I made the mistake of placing Ariel's cage next to the fiberglass/nylon curtains my mom had sewn for my room. She (the hamster, not my mom) managed to reach through the bars and gather in some of the curtain material, which she proceeded to eat in great chunks. I'm guessing the resulting chemical poisoning did nothing to improve her mood swings.

Nowadays we own two chinchillas, both of whom I think are strange, but I'm coming to believe that's just how chinchillas are and that our two are pretty average, as chinchillas go.

Sometimes, your pets' mental issues can work to your advantage. Our cat Fred is a great example. Fred's problem is that he is obsessed. Specifically, he is obsessed with me. Fred loves me. He sleeps virtually on top of me every night, which keeps me warm. I love having Fred in bed with me. He's like a big, fat, loudly purring electric blanket. When he dies, I'll be sad.

And cold.

Sometimes crazy/obsessive is good.

Cats vs Dogs - Let's Call It A Draw

I am neither a cat person nor a dog person. I'm a cog person. Or a dat person, if you prefer.

What I'm trying to say is, I like them both. I grew up with dogs, now I own cats. Four cats, to be exact. I thought we had capped the number at three, but a month or two ago, along came Bert.

Bert is an angry-looking gray cat that is actually about the sweetest little guy you'll ever hope to meet. He was rescued from near-death in a combined effort by Elissa, Terry and Chloe.

Elissa was driving near our house on a cold and snowy night when she saw this bedraggled cat sitting essentially in the middle of Eddy Road, which is one of those dark, narrow and hilly streets on which animals of all sorts are regularly run down.

Being Elissa, she stopped her car and got out to try and save the cat from being squashed by a Buick and/or from losing some key paws to frostbite. Scared by another passing car, the cat ran under Elissa's car and stayed there. Elissa called her mother to come and help, and Terry managed to get the cat out from under the car and safely back to our house, where he enjoyed warmth and abundant food for probably the first time in weeks.

As soon as he came home, I knew he was there to stay. Elissa had to go back to school, so Chloe immediately took charge of his care. The first thing she did was to dub the cat "Bert."

This caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the family partly because "Bert" is, by almost any standard, a strange name for a cat, but mostly because it's not a name that appears in the Harry Potter books.

The policy we've adopted in recent years is to name pets, particularly cats, after Harry Potter characters. And specifically members of the Weasley family. Our pre-existing cats − Fred, George and Charlie − all followed this useful convention.

But because Chloe devoted so much time and energy to nursing Bert back to health in his early days with us, the grudging consensus was that she should have naming rights. And so "Bert" it is.

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't count myself a member of either the dog camp or the cat camp. I just like animals in general, which is good in a house with four cats, two chinchillas, a guinea pig, a gecko lizard and a fish. Or at least I think we have a fish. There are pets that will live here for months at a time without my knowledge of their existence.

There are lots of reasons to love dogs. Off the top of my head:

- They're insanely loyal and devoted to you.
- They do tricks.
- They generally aim to please.
- They take care of their bodily functions outside.

That last point is key for me. I am the designated cat litter box cleaner in our house. I do this job every day. Every. Single. Day. Without fail. It's one of the first things I do when I get out of bed. And while not a particularly arduous job, I can never get away from it.

This is why I was the only one who raised any real objections to the idea of keeping Bert. His presence wasn't going to affect anyone else in the family like it would affect me. Needless to say, my opinions were officially registered for the record and summarily dismissed.

Still, I really have come to love cats over the years. They do, as a species, tend to believe they're superior to you in every way. But they're also much more affectionate than they're generally given credit for. And they're great for entertainment when they interact in little cat herds. There's always an alpha male who establishes himself as head cat honcho.

The title of alpha male is currently up for grabs among our cats. Before Bert, Charlie was the clear-cut Big Guy. He ruled the roost, and he did so in a comical way, keeping Fred and George on their toes by constantly jumping on them, biting them when they weren't looking, swatting at them as they passed by, etc.

Bert has submitted his application for the position, though. And Charlie is not happy about it. The two of them have fought a couple of times, but it has been pretty low-key. Almost like they're feeling each other out. Superior size and an "I don't sweat guys like you" attitude will probably mean Bert eventually comes away the victor.

Speaking of dominance, what I don't get is why dog owners and cat people feel the need to establish their choice as the "right" one. This is an ongoing, eternal battle in which everyone involved comes away looking a little...obsessed. And maybe a tad psychotic.

Can we just agree that whatever pet you choose to own (dog, cat, fish, elk, spider monkey, etc.), it does nothing to enhance or diminish your status as a good person and respectable citizen? Is that OK? Good. I'm glad that's settled. I was afraid you crazy dog people would be your usual weird, obstinate selves and mess the whole thing up.

Eight animals, plenty of poo

The other day I was trying to figure out whether I've cleaned up more animal poop or human poop in our house over the years. Ultimately I decided it was probably animal poop, but only by a narrow margin.

We have eight pets among our seven family members. This is in part because of the tradition whereby each of the kids gets a pet when they turn seven. The idea is to teach responsibility and all of that, and to some extent it works.

Still, I feel like I end up doing more than my share of fecal-related sanitation management, mostly in the form of cat waste. But I have to say, the kids do a halfway decent job of taking care of their animals. It could be a lot worse.

(NOTE: This is like the third time in three weeks I've referred to the fact that I clean the cat litter boxes. Why am I obsessed with this? I guess because it's a part of my daily life, but I never really think about it until I sit down to write).

I grew up in a dog house, with the extra-special bonus that I never had to clean up the doggy bombs in the backyard (my mom spoiled me, what can I say?) So to me, dogs were fun and virtually maintenance-free. Terry is and always has been a cat person, and from the time we were married, we've always had cats. I don't mind cats. I actually like the ones we have. But if I could somehow get the same sort of poo-free deal I had circa 1981 with dogs, I'd go out and get one in a minute.

Here's a rundown of our zoo:

CATS (3): Fred, George, Charlie
Fred and George are brothers. Very pretty snow-white cats. We refer to Fred as "Fat Fred," since he's noticeably larger than his brother and that's about the only way to tell them apart. Fred was the alpha male until Charlie came along 15 months ago. Charlie was a stray and a kitten, two factors that immediately endeared him to the women in my house. Terry found him in the backyard. Now he dominates everything and Fred hates him. George, meanwhile, is mentally handicapped. Seriously. And he's sort of creepy, too. But he tries.

CHINCHILLA (1): Percy
Chincillas are cool. They're big fluffy balls of....well, fluff. Percy is very friendly. He lives in a big cage in the living room and will always park himself next to the bars if he senses that you're willing to reach in and pet him. Elissa, his owner, says he's an attack chinchilla. As far as I can tell, the only thing he attacks are his yogurt treats.

RAT (1): Ginevra Elizabeth
If you're a Harry Potter fan, you'll notice that all of our pet names so far are taken from the Weasley children. It seemed like a good idea at the time...Anyway, yes, we have a rat. And believe it or not, she's about the most lovable thing you'll ever see. Just a nice little creature, though no amount of "nice" can overcome the fact that she's a rat and has that rat tail. That's creepy even for those who love her. Ginevra belongs to Elissa, who apparently has a thing for strange pets.

GUINEA PIG (1): S'mores (aka, Muffins)
This one is Melanie's. Mel named her S'mores, but her roomate, Chloe, insists that the rodent is named "Muffins," which Chloe believes is a better name. I tell Chloe she can't randomly rename her sister's pet, but as you might imagine if you know Chloe, this in no way deters her. Actually, I think Mel and I may be the only ones who like the name "S'mores" better. Poor Mel.

ROBO DWARF (1): Roger
Speaking of Chloe, she's the proud owner of Roger, a female robo dwarf hamster. That sentence begs two questions: (1) Why is a girl hamster named Roger? (ANSWER: Because Chloe is Chloe); (2) What's a robo dwarf hamster? (ANSWER: I don't know. Here's some Wikipedia help.)  Roger is small. So small, in fact, that I don't even notice her in her tiny cage when I enter the girls' bedroom. Therefore I forget Roger exists. I'll bet it has been a good month or so since I've seen Roger.

LEOPARD GECKO (LIZARD) (1): Allie
The coolest thing about Allie is that she eats crickets. Live ones. Terry goes out and buys two dozen of them at a time. She or Jared -- technically Allie is Jared's -- will dump a bunch into Allie's cage, prompting Allie to go into Hunting Mode. Whenever a cricket moves, Allie creeps over to it, sizes it up, and strikes. She catches the cricket in her mouth and casually chews it, which makes the whole thing a fun spectator sport while undoubtedly being unpleasant for the crickets.

I just learned that Elissa has staged an intervention and has taken custody of Allie away from Jared. I don't believe Jared knows this yet. Elissa says Jared isn't taking care of Allie, but she is graciously giving her brother visitation rights. It's going to be interesting when Jared finds this all out. Given that his powers of observation rival those of his father, I predict this will happen sometime in 2015.

Yes, I still read a newspaper every day

Every morning I follow essentially the same routine: I get up, I feed the cats, I go downstairs and clean out their litter boxes, and then I go outside and get the newspaper. Only one of these things truly makes me happy.

The getting up part I don't mind but I don't love. The cat-related jobs are necessary evils, the kind of thing you do because over the years it has become your job and there's no real need to change. But the newspaper...that's one of the highlights of my day.

Seriously. I love getting the paper. I love taking it out of the bag and scanning the headlines. No matter that the news may already be 12 hours old (or more) and I could have found the same information online soon after it happened. The point is, there's nothing like holding and reading a real newspaper.

I understand that I am a dying breed. Relatively few people read physical, hard-copy newspapers anymore. And in no way am I a technophobe. I still get a lot of my news online. But you have to understand, I started my career in a newsroom. Night after night, I got the thrill of producing a publication that would be distributed to thousands of people within hours after we finished it. It was a rush.

Of course this was back in the 80's and 90's. Even then people were predicting the downfall of print journalism,  but I wanted to make a career out of being a sports writer. I loved covering a game, writing about it, and knowing that my work was being read at breakfast tables around the area the next morning. Or would end up being pasted into some kid's high school scrapbook. That was a natural high.

In time, I realized that a career in journalism wasn't to be. I had a growing family to support, and honestly, you ain't gonna get rich as a newspaper reporter. So I eventually moved into marketing and public relations, a move a lot of reporters make when they decide it's time to get a "real" job, for whatever reason.

But I hang on to my newspaper addiction. The paper shows up every day, rain or shine, in front of my house, and I read it cover to cover. I still read the comics and do the little word puzzle that runs next to them when I have time. I scour the sports pages, especially, but I also read every story in the metro and business sections to make sure I haven't missed anything work-related.

There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when newspapers will go away, and I'm actually OK with that. I know it's unstoppable, and progress is progress. But I think back to the days when I delivered the Lake County News-Herald and practically every house along my route got the paper at least on Sundays, if not every day.

Nowadays, the paper is delivered by adults with huge routes and hundreds of customers. The routes HAVE to be huge, because the vast majority of houses don't subscribe any more. I used to ride my bike and place the paper inside people's front doors or in their side milk chutes. Now it's thrown from moving cars, though sometimes (as in our case) you can ask for a delivery tube to be placed in front of your house and the paper will be stuffed in there every morning.

This is the second nostalgic blog post in two days, if you're keeping track. I guess that's another sign of advancing age -- when you start talking about the "old" days. But I'll tell you one thing: If reading a newspaper is a sign of old fogey-hood, you can book my ticket on the Geezer Bus today.