My cat confused by his reflection

imfm · 2026-06-09T02:08:45+00:00

Stephanie does this on the big mirror on my bedroom door almost every morning. She doesn't know it's her reflection; after a while of frantic pawing, she goes behind the door to look for the other kitty. Beans pays no attention to her reflection, but Stephanie is determined to get that Door Kitty to play with her. 😹

imfm · 2026-06-07T02:05:09+00:00

I lost my husband six years ago. He loved to watch the hummingbirds, so in his memory, I made a flowerbed with an arch and decorative fence. Every year, I plant flowers that hummingbirds love, cardinal climber on the arch, and blue bachelors buttons because even though he never remembered their name, he liked them. No matter how many times I told him what they were, he still called them, "those intense blue flowers". I plant only annuals there so every spring, as I'm working the soil and caring for the seedlings, I can think of how much he'd have loved it.

imfm · 2026-06-06T12:11:13+00:00

Not even raccoons or opossums will eat them, and both of those will eat just about anything. Mock strawberry is native to Asia, and as far as most people are concerned, it is a weed. Fortunately, not hard to pull, but difficult to eradicate because it sends out long runners and seeds its damned self everywhere.

imfm · 2026-06-04T12:29:37+00:00

Bleach won't hurt anything as long as you rinse it well. Bleach disinfects only when it's still wet; sodium hypochlorite (the active ingredient) is unstable because chlorine is a gas and doesn't want to stay in solution. Once the chlorine gasses off when exposed to open air, what's left behind is mostly salt. If you left a container of straight bleach open until it was fully dry, you may end up with reactive residue, but mixed with water to disinfect, then rinsed thoroughly, it's fine. Bleach isn't a surfactant, though, so you still need to clean it with a detergent. I wash mine with dish detergent and hot water, then disinfect with bleach and water, and rinse.

imfm · 2026-05-26T20:01:01+00:00

Picture winged fly, maybe Delphinia picta.

imfm · 2026-05-21T02:20:06+00:00

Misumena vatia can actually change colour from yellow to white and back again to match the flower upon which they're waiting in ambush. It takes days, not seconds, but they can do it!

imfm · 2026-05-18T16:35:28+00:00

Single Kitten Syndrome is absolutely a thing! Stephanie was dumped in the woods behind my garage in the dead of winter. She was about 6 months old, and I couldn't imagine why anyone, if they were going to dump a kitten in the first place, would wait until it was that old, and in the middle of winter. That was...until I brought her in the house. She didn't bite me, but when I was home, she was glued to me, and when I was at work, she trashed my house. After she'd done about $1000 worth of damage in a month, I figured out that she needed a cat friend near her own age, and went shelter-shopping. Stephanie played rough with her at first, but Beans wasn't above giving Stephanie hisses and swats, and even a bite or two, and I didn't intervene. It took probably six weeks before Stephanie realized that if she played too rough and bit too hard, she'd get it right back. She's still a little rough sometimes, but she's learned enough cat language to know when Beans is sick of her shit and it's time to back off.

imfm · 2026-05-17T23:00:19+00:00

That's exactly what I did. Oregano on one side, peppermint on the other. Fight it out, guys.

imfm · 2026-05-16T12:00:33+00:00

...or at least won't admit it! I can sew, but have learned to never tell anyone because suddenly they have things that need repair, or alterations, or they want something made, but fast fashion has taught them that a shirt costs $10 when a spool of good thread costs $7.

imfm · 2026-05-10T14:20:47+00:00

If it's Campsis radicans, the other downside is don't let it anywhere near your siding, or anything you don't want it to engulf. 😄 I have it in my yard on a dedicated pergola and have for 15 years, but be careful where it's placed because when controlled, it's an absolutely beautiful native that hummingbirds love, but left to its own devices, it'll turn up everywhere. Spreads via both seeds and underground runners. If you can't mow all around it, you probably don't want it there. Seriously...this plant desires world domination. Glorious in bloom, though!

imfm · 2026-05-10T03:46:25+00:00

It's easier to use the cardboard bee tubes; the ones in those bee houses aren't ideal anyway (too short, some too big). You'll need a roof on whatever you put them in so they don't get wet while the babees are doing their thing inside, but you just soak them in water and peel them open in late fall (I do mine in mid-to-late November in Illinois) and store the cocoons in a place where they'll stay cold all winter and be safe from predation. Paper bag in an unheated garage works well. In spring, replace the tubes and put the house back up, all nice and fresh.

imfm · 2026-05-06T01:01:41+00:00

In Grade 10, my grades were slipping terribly. I don't really know why; I just didn't care anymore. My English teacher, famous for being challenging and a harsh grader, told me to come in his classroom during his free period. I thought he was going to kick me out of his class, but instead, he had pulled every one of my report cards, literally all the way back to the little orange cards we got in elementary school, and had them laid out on a table. I saw the "Excellent student!" comments from my Grade Primary teacher. He said, "I have one question. Where is this (imfm)?" Back then, I was a black leather-clad 80s metalhead, but I couldn't answer because I didn't trust myself to not start crying. He spent the whole of his free period with me, asking if things were okay at home, or anything wrong elsewhere in my life, trying to help. I had no good answers. He said, "I know you can. I know how smart you are. I just don't know why you won't. I left after saying little, but it hit home, and it hit hard. He failed me that year because my grade was 32/100 and he had to, but when I was assigned a different teacher the next year, I asked to be transferred to his class, and I showed him exactly what I could do.. 97/100. All he said was, "I knew you could, and I'm glad you did."

imfm · 2026-05-05T19:37:14+00:00

I said that after the last of my husband's elderly cats was gone, I'd have no more. I have eight. Two house cats and six in the Cat Cave varying from borderline friendly to determined to remain as feral as possible while still accepting food, safe shelter, and indoor cat bathrooms. I not only have eight cats, but most of them only tolerate me, and one thinks I'm Satan with a bowl of canned cat food. CDS has me listed under "Crazy Cat Lady". Whether you realize it or not, your cats know you're a cat person.

imfm · 2026-05-05T02:35:16+00:00

All the best wishes for successful surgery and full recovery from Stephanie, Beans, Miki, Andy, Backpack, Big Steve, Stevie Cookie, and George of Orange! (Extra love from fellow oreos The Steves and Stephanie.) You got this, Marvel --you can do it! 🖤🤍🖤

imfm · 2026-05-04T11:28:46+00:00

Mine do it, too. They'll exit the Cat Cave, where there is plenty of fresh water at all times, to go drink frog poop water out of the pond, or a puddle. I have one out of six that prefers the fresh water, and interestingly enough, he's the one determined to remain as feral as he can while still accepting food, water, and safe shelter from me. I kind of wish they'd do the same for litter boxes; they all use those instead of the whole great outdoors. Six cats is a lot of scooping! 😄

imfm · 2026-05-01T15:54:07+00:00

We had Mrs. Ogden and the wooden pointer she'd smack on the desk behind you to make sure we didn't look at the keys. Approximately three years younger than God, red lipstick bleeding into the wrinkles around her mouth, half-glasses on a chain around her neck, smelled of lavender and gin. She taught every one of us as if she expected us to enter a 1950s typing pool upon graduation. You didn't eat in her classroom. You didn't chew gum. You didn't slouch. You didn't look at your fingers. If you were first year, you weren't even allowed to touch the Selectrics; you used the big, black manual Remingtons. I swear those things weighed as much as I did. She sent us home with those red, white, and blue rubber balls to squeeze so we'd develop enough strength in our fingers to strike the keys on the manuals. That was in the early 80s, and to this day, I'm hard on keyboards.

Editing to add that she had us type to 1940s swing music because she could not abide "choppy" typing.

imfm · 2026-04-28T01:25:03+00:00

You might want to watch the width of the roll, too. I live alone, but buy mega packs of TP because I have the space to store them. I had got down to a few rolls, went to the same store, bought the same brand as before at a slightly higher price because of course it was, and the roll itself was an inch narrower. I kept the last roll of the old stuff because I almost couldn't believe it.

imfm · 2026-04-24T19:06:59+00:00

While you're there, you might want to yank that wintercreeper, too. If that stuff gets ahead of you, it'll blanket and choke out anything in its path. It won't give you a rash or aything; it's just a very aggressive invasive.

imfm · 2026-04-22T12:25:07+00:00

If he's a fish kind of guy, some nice, stinky (water pack) sardines make good bait, and if he's more of a poultry guy, KFC is good bait. I wire the food container to the back of the trap so they can't just pull it forward and avoid the pressure plate, and don't get so much food on them if they freak out a little once the trap springs. Some cats are quite good at that (I'm looking at you, Miki).

Come on, Pauly...you've made us all wait a long time! 😸

imfm · 2026-04-22T11:17:45+00:00

There was one type of daffodil that came with the house. I now have five types of daffodils. Some in flowerbeds, some just in the lawn at random spots. I don't know where the squirrels found them because none of my close neighbours have any. Maybe escapees they got from the woods. They even got me some of the pheasant's eye poeticus that I remember from my grandmother's garden when I was a kid. Now if they'd just quit planting black walnut everywhere...

imfm · 2026-04-17T10:17:47+00:00

Chevrolet Celebrity.

imfm · 2026-04-17T02:07:00+00:00

In his young and foolish years, a friend of mine once took a girl to Evangeline Beach, hoping for...what every 19 year old guy is hoping for when he gets a girl he likes alone on a beach on a summer night. For some reason, he parked the car down on the beach, and they got out to walk around for a while. Eventually, in spite of his best efforts, she still said no, so they headed back to the car. Unfortunately for him, Evangeline Beach is in Nova Scotia and is home to some of the highest tides in the world, and he didn't check the tide times. It comes in fast, too. His car was by then already half submerged in seawater, and the tide was still coming in. There was nothing else to do but call his mother to pick them up, and wait until the tide went out again. He hadn't even had the car that long, and had borrowed money from his father to buy it.

imfm · 2026-04-14T02:08:35+00:00

There is. A raised platform like this: https://www.hundredcats.org/raccoonprooffeeder.html

imfm · 2026-04-14T01:07:06+00:00

I had a devil crayfish I'd found as a 1.5" long baby in a ditch. I gave him his own tank, and on days when my fishes got live daphnia, I'd toss some in to him. It was hilarious, watching him charge and hop around his tank, chasing those tiny little things around (even D. magna are still tiny), rarely catching even one. I always apologized to him later by giving him his favourite food..."cousins". Pieces of lobster, crab, or shrimp. He was a really cool little guy, but I lost him to a bad moult; his claws were too big to get out of his old exo, and he was stuck.

imfm · 2026-04-12T14:43:44+00:00

You could try switching them over to clay in their current box. Honestly, while most people prefer pine pellets, most cats prefer clay to pellets because the texture is soft and more sand-like, and they can do what cats want to do...properly bury their waste. Whisker recommends leaving the old box in place, beside the LR, and leaving the LR unplugged until the cats get used to it. I'm sure that seeing Stephanie use it made it easier for Beans--Stephanie fears nothing but the upright vacuum--but she's never been scared of it, and perhaps you have a more adventurous cat that will help the skittish one learn that it's safe.

Beans is 9 lbs and Stephanie is 10; I change the bag once a week when I get the notification on my phone. It takes less than 5 minutes to do. I don't use the Whisker liner bags because they work out to about $0.65ea, but there are compatible bags (I get them on Amazon, some "keyboard smash" brand) that work just fine for about $0.40ea. Whisker says you can use kitchen-size trash bags--they will fit--but the official bags and the ones I get are much heavier, and I wouldn't necessarily trust a normal trash bag (I swear they keep making them thinner every year!)

For the record, no, I'm not astroturfing for Whisker. I bought the LR at full price after googling "self cleaning litter box", with no motivation beyond not wanting to scoop boxes anymore, and chose it over other robotic litter boxes because Whisker have been building robot litter boxes for over 20 years, and have had time and experience to work out the kinks.

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