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Welcome to the album page for all of the pictures we took of the cats during 2024!

The first thing I should say is that this page this year is short. Not that our cats aren't photogenic, but we have simply taken so many pictures of essentially the same thing that cat pictures are getting to be old hat. So with apologies to our cats, here are the pictures we took of them this year.

April 5: "But we're guests, aren't we?"

I suppose anyone who lives with a cat knows that they have their "spots" where they feel comfortable and like to relax. For our cats, one of those spots is on the bed in the guest room. It is always heart-warming to see the cats snuggling up together, or at least quite near each other. In the four pictures below taken today, you can see Lucky, Cole, and Bob on the guest room bed. Zack tends to be more aloof, and he tends to stay downstairs in the study.

Here are some additional pictures of the cats on the guest room bed, taken over the next few days:

July 18: Zack's Quiet Time

Here is a single picture of Zack that I took today:

I'd been sitting on the sofa in the living room reading, when Zack came in to see if he could get some lap time. He was intelligent enough to see that my lap was filled with an open book and, unlike those cats who will ignore what you are trying to do and just curl up right on top of the book, he decided to sit beside me.

I thought he might sit beside me on the sofa, but he chose to stretch out on the piece of furniture to my left.

He stayed there for quite a while, and when I eventually got up for something, I got my phone and took this picture.

July 21: Lap Time

All of our cats save Bob are "lap" cats, in that they like to be in your lap.

Oddly enough, though, they all have their preferred spots for you to be when they want to get in your lap.

Zack is probably the exception; he will take any and every opportunity to get my lap pretty much no matter where I am. About the only place he doesn't particularly prefer me to be is on the bed; but in every other chair in the house, he will be in my lap if I let him.

Lucky is a bit different. He will try to climb into my lap whenever I am in a chair, although he tends not to stay long unless that chair is the sofa in the media room, where he prefers to kind of drape himself across one leg.

Cole is the most particular of all. The one time I can be sure that he will want to climb into my lap is when, as in the picture at left, I am seated in the office chair at my laptop in the study. There, it is something of a ritual, or a "dance" that has to go on to actually get to the point of his being in my lap.

First, he will wander up to my chair, look up at me, and meow. When I slide back a bit to allow him to jump up, then he will hesitate and act as if he really didn't want to be in my lap after all. When I slide forward again, the process will repeat- sometimes a couple of times. Finally, he will tentatively put his front paws up on my leg as if to check to see if the lap is actually "free" (as if he couldn't see this from the floor). He will repeat this process two, three, or more times, before he will finally take the bull by the horns and commit to jumping up into my lap.

I like having him in my lap, but, again as you can see in the picture, the way he lies there means that I can't use my left arm, which is probably his intention. When this happens, I'll stop typing and perhaps play a game that only requires the mouse in my right hand. This can only go on so long, though, and after ten or fifteen minutes, when I try to back to typing, Cole will jump down.

July 28: Offering Sympathy

Early on the 28th I had my High Intensity Ultrasound procedure for my essential tremor. I got out of the hospital in the early afternoon, and when I came home I was pretty tired.

So when I got home, I had something to eat and drink and then went upstairs to lie down for a while. I wasn't feeling bad; surprisingly there was not even a residual headache, although I was just a bit dizzy. The most common side effect of the procedure is the feeling that you are walking around on a cruise ship; there is a slight feeling of being off-balance. That's how I felt when I got home, hence my desire just to lie down for a while.

As soon as I did, Lucky came upstairs to offer some comfort, and he lay down beside me. He stayed right there for the hour or so that I lay there, and it was nice to have him nearby.

Incidentally, that side effect lasted for three or four days. I found myself misjudging things on my right side. I would sometimes brush against the right side of a doorway, or, when I drove, I had to be a bit more careful of any car on my right- particularly when parking. The other side effect I experienced was some slurring of words, particularly when I tried to talk more rapidly. This effect, too, eventually disappeared, although it took a couple of weeks to happen.

September 20: Cat Curiosity

When I am at the laptop and Cole is nearby, he usually wants to get in my lap.

Right at this moment, though, Cole seemed more interested it what I was actually doing. It was as if he was either watching so he could learn something, or watching to see if he could be of help (perhaps catching me in a mistake of some kind).

Fred was the one who took the picture; he thought the positioning was as amusing as I did.

October 21: What's going on here?

This is a picture that requires a bit of context.

Occasionally, I will have a problem with small ants. They come in through the closet underneath the back stairs- either from the garage or, more likely, the outside storage under those same stairs.

They will scout around and usually make a trail over to where cats get fed, or somewhere near the kitchen counter where they can look around for some spilled sugar or something else to eat. They usually don't find much, but they can be a nuisance. I had the exterminator out to treat inside the closet (which pretty much stopped them), but Fred thought we ought to wipe the whole floor with bleach to erase any lingering markers of the path they had made.

As it turns out, the cats seemed to love the scent of the bleach, for three of them came in after the bleach and dried and started rolling around on the floor as if bleach and catnip were the same thing. I didn't realize that this was a "thing" with cats, but it wasn't causing them any harm so I didn't try to shoo them away.

Instead, I went and got my phone and took this photo.

December 11: "Behold the power of cheese clothes!"

You've seen numerous pictures of the cats on my clothes, but it seems also true that the clothes can act like a magnet, drawing cats to them even if they aren't all right on top of them. That's what seemed to be happening today, allow me to get the rare picture of all four cats in the same place at the same time that doesn't involved getting fed:

Another year with four cats has come to an end; those are the best pictures of the cats from this year.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

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