Don't mess with this kitty

I found this as someone's avatar on the forums at Boot City.

Socks the Cat

Let me formally introduce Socks. He is my cat now. I adopted him from Becky. He just turned 8 years old this month. I'm not sure, but it looks like he's got Arby's on his mind. Either that or I had Arby's for dinner and I have too much time on my hands. It's one of those two things.

You can see where he got his name. He's mostly black but with white on his feet, his frontside and some on his face. He's been (mostly) well behaved since I've had him. I don't allow him go on the kitchen counters or on the dining room table. I've caught him these places once or twice now and he knows he is not supposed be in them. Also, nothing has happened so far, but he's been known to relieve himself in areas other than his litterbox when something is upsetting him. One time I thought I found a turd on the carpet but on closer inspection it turned out only to be a hairball. It was a dark wet and cold mass of hair with puke-ish looking stuff on the carpet around it. I'd never seen a hairball before that one but I'm positive that's what it was. I wish now I'd taken a photo of it but there's always next time I guess. Maybe next time I will take a photo and put it up here.

He likes to watch birds. He sits on the floor at my patio doors or sometimes up on topside of the back of the recliner near the patio doors. He also likes the window sill if I have the window open. I think he sleeps mostly at night or while I'm away, otherwise he mostly sits around or walks in and out of whatever room I might be in.

Since I've had him I don't use my alarm clock anymore. He gets right up in my face as soon as I begin to move around when I first start to wake...even if that's 4:30 in the morning. I don't mind it or I'd shut him out of my room at night. He leaves me alone to doze off again but sometimes he's more persistent. He licks my head which I think is rather weird behavior. Other times he'll paw at the bed right near my head like he's digging for something. One time when I had dozed off again he was bold enough to slap me in the face with his paw. It's a good thing he doesn't have any claws or that could've been bad. At least I know if my house was burning down he'd be able to wake me. Although in the morning I think it's all about the food. I think he just wants me to get up and feed him and that's really it. He eats his whole dish of food right away like a dog would. Any cat I've ever known eats throughout the day and you just fill the dish when it's empty. I think if I kept filling up his dish when it was empty he'd just keep eating it all up. Socks is 12.5 lbs.

Cat and bird

I'm not real sure what's happening with my house finches. The first pair I think is gone along with their 2 baby birds. I think that other pair in the corner nest took over the general area but it's harder to see and I haven't seen them flying in or out so much. Sunday I saw some kind of baby bird sitting near my patio. I think it was a baby robin but I'm not sure. It sat there for a long time chirping loudly every so often in sort of a helpless baby bird way.
I recently adopted Becky's cat Socks. I thought about changing his name to something else but he's already about 8 years old I guess. I have no real reason to do that. Tonight in fact I'm going to buy some cat litter for the first time. Socks likes to watch all the activity with the finches and other birds out in the yard. I think he'll enjoy it when the Sandhill Cranes come back this summer.

Finch Update

This morning I had some time to watch the activities at the nest. There's definitely a baby bird. I think just one. It rises to the edge of the nest and flaps its' wings but does not leave yet. While this young one is being attended to by its' parents there seems to be a new conflict going on between its' parents and a new pair of finches that want to move into a nest the next slot over. I've never seen this other pair until today. These 2 pairs of finches aren't getting along at all. They chase each other out and they flap around in the air like they're fighting. I watched this for about 20 minutes this morning. I'm rooting for the pair with the baby bird. They were there first and they have a young one to look after. Besides that I'm pretty sure they built most of any of the nests that are under any of the slots.

I took some photos but they're not great. You can't see the nest in the corner or the baby bird. The first shows the new pair in the slot on the left and the original female in the slot on the right (with a bit of motion blur). The corner nest is out of view to the left behind the edge of my patio doors.
This second photo has one of the males in mid-air. I'm pretty sure that's the other male on the rain gutter but I can't tell for sure, or which was which male. The original female is on the right in the same slot.

Tragedy

I came home after work today to find a dead house finch lying in the drive directly in front of my garage. I feared the worst, that for sure it was my finch from the nest over my patio. Then I decided to take some photos to document the tragedy. Was that crazy?

After I the photos I picked up the deceased and put her into a paper bag for the garbage. If it was my finch I didn't want it to turn out like this bird. I rushed into the house so I could look out my patio doors at the nest. There wasn't anyone home at first. I checked several times and after about 10 minutes I finally saw both the male and female just like I did this morning. Thankfully the dead one I found wasn't the female from my nest. Still tragic but not quite as much so.

Definitely House Finches

I took this just after I opened my vertical blinds this morning. It's the first I've seen the male in a while. He's the red one. I only managed to get one photo and then they flew away. I'm not sure yet if any baby birds hatched yet. I should open the patio door and take a listen.

Muppet Wiki

Occasionally I wonder whatever I did with all the free time in my life before the internet became what it is today. I had one of these moments of reflection recently after I spent an hour or so looking over details of Muppet characters at this site.

I haven't seen the Muppets in a while or any of the newer movies. I remember when I was younger always hating anything that had to do with Miss Piggy. These were some of my favorite muppet characters.

House Finches

I've concluded the birds building nest above my patio are house finches. I don't see the male as much as I did during the nest building phase but I'm positive that's what is living there.

These are house finches...