The Oliver Chronicles Part 3

I haven't posted an Oliver update in quite awhile.

For those who don't know, Oliver is the insane cat we adopted from a shelter back in March. I'm not kidding when I say he's insane. He can be a total spaz. I have a love/hate relationship with him. When he's  being beyond mischievous and breaks things or  bites the back of my leg "just because," he's not my favorite kitty. That's when I threaten to drive him back to the shelter. When he follows me around the house, "talks" to me and looks at me with his sparkling blue eyes, he melts my heart. That's when I can't imagine sending him back to live in a cage until another unsuspecting soul adopts him.

Oliver is quite the handful. He does normal kitten/young cat stuff but he also does things I've never dealt with before. He climbs the windows. This drives me insane. Our picture window has several panes and he jumps and hangs from the wood. I can hear his claws tearing it up. He does the same with our screen doors, then hangs from the screen by his claws until one of us rescues him. He's trying to catch the bugs outside. The solution is to close the doors and leave our outside light off, which I don't like to do. Until he calms down I have no choice.

He  torments our other cat, Flower. She's sweet and mild mannered. He's territorial and dominating. He stalks her, pounces on her and pins her down. She screeches. At first we yelled at him a lot and used the spray bottle. It really didn't help.

He's not really affected by the spray bottle. *sigh*

We now ban him to the basement the second he starts with that territorial crap. I think it's working, but I know this type of behavior will take time to eliminate. He may never stop completely. If we can put the brakes on it most of the time it'll ease the cat-related stress in the house.

Oliver can be adorable. He's very energetic. He runs through the house like a maniac when I get home from work in the afternoon. He has all kinds of pent up energy to get out of his system. Unfortunately, that's what gets him into trouble most of the time. LOL

Just a random pic taken a few days ago. I can't get over how big he is. He's not even a year old.. 

He chases bugs indoors. Tonight he swatted a big fly out of the window, watched it crawl on the floor for a minute, then ate it. Yeah, that was pretty disgusting. On the bright side, it's good to know he'll take care of any flies or moths that are unfortunate enough to come through our doors. Who knows how much damage he'll cause trying to catch them. He's a big cat and doesn't care what's around when he's trying to catch something that's moving.

I gave up trying to keep him off the kitchen counter. He likes to lie on my perpetual pile of papers. Whatever. When he's there he's calm and quiet, which is a good thing. When I'm cooking I don't let him get on the counters. The other day he entertained himself by knocking my bills onto the floor and attacking them. Good boy!

Chewing the credit card bill.

I also gave up trying to stop him from getting on top of the refrigerator. I mean really, what's the harm? Once again, he's not allowed up there when I cook because he needs the counter to jump up. He snoozes there at night when we're watching TV. How can I say no to this face?

So, today I'm going to keep him but who knows what tomorrow will bring. He better behave.