First, I’d like to announce that Book 53 of the Klepto Cat Mysteries is available now in both print and Kindle versions. I think you’ll enjoy this lively and fun and suspenseful story where Rags Gets the Upper Paw. Oh yes, he keeps busy in this tale of many dimensions, which he shares with a bird friend, as you can see from the cover. Who better to pair a precocious cat with than a clever and spirited parrot? Available now at Amazon.com.
What crazy, silly, interesting things have your cats been up
to this week? If your cats are like ours, they are pretty much creatures of habit—you’ll find them sleeping in one favorite spot by morning, another when the sun comes out, another place in the late afternoon and they go to bed in the same spot each night. They play with the same toys, react the same to their treats 
and they follow the same routine at meal time. Our Olivia prefers to graze on kibbles. She’ll occasionally eat canned food, but mostly she seems to think it’s gross. 
Sophie, on the other hand, nibbles on kibbles, but she love, love, loves a meal of canned food. Three times a day it’s the same thing. She finds me wherever I am and yowls reallllly loud. I look at the clock and often it is almost right on the button time for her to eat. She watches me head for the kitchen then she waits in her 
usual feeding spot for me to place her plate on the floor. Not Olivia. I used to try feeding her yummy cat food. She’d take one sniff and walk away.
It’s charming to watch the cats follow their habits—their chosen patterns of life day in and day out, but I enjoy a little shift in their routines, too. It might drive me crazy and scare me silly when I can’t find Olivia anywhere. I’m accustomed to seeing her in certain places at certain times—but not 
always. She likes to mix it up a bit at times and make me look for her. I think, sometimes, that she has a warped sense of humor as she obviously hears me calling and she stays quiet. Sometimes she’s actually watching me walk past her while screeching her name. Yet she continues to hide, often in plain sight. Sure, I can see the humor in it once I find her. I 
can forgive her for frightening me—fearing she has slipped out, broken through a window screen, or is hurt somewhere. Yeah, I have a big imagination.
What funny thing has Olivia done this week? I got a kick out of her nose-to-nose meet-up with a humming bird that hovered outside my office window inches away from where she sat one afternoon. It was kind of 
eerie as if the two of them exchanged a secret message or something.
A fire truck drove down our street past our house one day this week and that excited Olivia. She likes trucks! She used to hear the trash truck and she’d run and hide. Now she hears it or the UPS or Fed-Ex truck and she scurries to the screen door or a window perch to watch it rumble past.
Good news—remember that Olivia is a feisty (sweet and sassy) calico. She turned one year old in May, and she has not been okay with a grooming routine. However, I’ve been persistent—she has fairly long, fluffy fur and sharp claws. She needs regular combing and nail-trimming. Well, we’ve finally come to a pretty good understanding about her personal hygiene. If she’s relaxed in my lap, I may be able to trim the nails on one paw at a time. In order to do another one, we need to obtain the same level of relaxation together on another day. And we’re doing more combing and brushing. There’s one rule I must adhere to—leave the floofy tummy alone. Her claws might be trimmed, but she still has sharp teeth.
