This is the guest bed in my loft/office covered with a lovely quilt. No matter how often I straighten out the quilt, this is how it always ends up so I have pretty much given up on tidying it.
Pharoah (at right) is perfectly happy sleeping on top of the quilt. But Freddie (at left crammed up against the wall) will not sleep on the quilt. He likes the feel of the blanket underneath.
So when the bed is made nicely and looks neat and tidy, he comes along, digs under the quilt and pulls it back so he can lie on the blanket. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m not changing my story!
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins unless otherwise noted. No commercial usage without express permission. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
Freddie and Frankie both have an affinity for flowing water. Whenever they hear water running, they come running to check it out.
Drinking out of the bathroom faucets in the washbasin or bathtub became a morning habit with the two fighting over the optimal position to receive the nectar of the gods from the tap.
Every morning I thought I really had to figure out a replacement for this activity. I never drink unfiltered city water myself so why should I inflict this on innocent creatures who depend on me to make these decisions. And Los Angeles water isn’t exactly mountain pure. Feline Friday is not the format to get into that discussion so I will move on.
All the pet drinking fountains I had seen in the stores were made out of plastic. When my late cat Friday was drinking and eating out of plastic dishes, he developed a condition known as feline acne (quite common) around his mouth and lips. I switched to stainless steel and the problem disappeared.
Amazon to the rescue! I searched for stainless steel pet drinking fountains and there were quite a few choices. There are still plastic elements in the fountains but nothing is perfect. The one I decided on seemed to have the least amount of plastic and the most amount of steel coming into contact with the cats. I also needed one that was substantial enough that these two rambunctious guys wouldn’t knock it over… and big enough that they could both use it at the same time as you can see in the photo at the top of the page. And the gallon size doesn’t require refilling all the time.
There are two ways to enjoy the water. One is drinking out of the bottom bowl where the water is calm like a zen pool.
The other is to drink out of the top bowl where the water is being recirculated so it is always moving… just like the cat drinking it!
Another option is to drink the water as it slides down the side of the top bowl in a waterfall. Freddie seems most attracted to this.
The most amazing part about this story is that I ordered the fountain from Amazon in the afternoon, clicked on one-day Prime member delivery and voila…. it was delivered by 9:00pm that evening!
I set it up immediately (you have to read the instructions for the motor and other info on putting it together… but it couldn’t be easier) and decided to put it just outside the bathroom. Freddie and Frankie came running up the stairs right away and wasted no time in getting their snouts wet.
Pharoah has never attempted to drink out of a faucet so I didn’t think he would be interested. I was wrong. I should have had my camera handy to take pictures, but I didn’t. So I missed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to snap a photo of all three guzzling the water at the same time. Just take my word for it, it was overly cute!
We’ve had the fountain for three days now and it is certainly a success with the cats stopping by individually to quench their thirst. Of course, with cats you never know if or when they will lose interest. But unlike an optional toy, cats drink a lot of water, so I think this was money well spent.
Although the motor is silent, I turn it off at night to save electricity.
There is some maintenance cleaning the cat hair out of the filter and motor on a timely basis but the fountain comes apart easily and compared to cleaning out litter boxes this should be a cinch!
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins unless otherwise noted. No commercial usage without express permission. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
I am Pharoah, as I am sure you know by now. I continue to keep my title of King of Pillows. I can’t think of a better place to take a nap than the love seat by the window with the sunshine filtering through the trees.
I speak for all three of us felines when I say we can apologize all day but really, it’s not up to us. We are not allowed to use our human’s computer or her camera. Yes, we pay rent by being her companions, greeting her at the door when she comes home, keeping her warm in bed, watching TV with her (all those murder mysteries sicken us… what is wrong with humans?), and allowing her to feed us and stroke us.
But the bottom line is we can’t force her to upload posts to her blog.
Her excuse is she is working on “more important projects.” What can be more important, I ask you, than Feline Friday?
Well, we all hope from now on she will pay more attention to her blog. Yes, we understand that she has “a real life.” But is it REALLY any better than her blogging life? Hmmm, we seriously doubt it.
Anyway, we are happy to be here today.
Hi, Frankie here. I can’t believe she is posting this photo. No, I am NOT spoiled. This is me thinking very hard about what I can do to improve my human’s life. She believes all I do is take naps, eat and play. Not true. Without me she would have an incredibly boring life.
I don’t know what she did before I came along. Of course, I appreciate her too. Not many people would have taken a chance on a street cat. But I paid my dues out there and now I deserve a little comfort. But most of the time I’m working really hard to help her, believe me.
Freddie: Don’t disturb me. I’m dreaming of that cafe in Paris where they served me caviar on a silver plate. Now all I get is cat food.
Okay, I admit it… I was never in Paris except in my dreams. And after my previous owner passed away and the family didn’t want me, I wanted out of that cat shelter so badly. But people just passed me by… until she came along. I was ready to go home with anybody who would have me… but I lucked out and now I “amour” my human so much… I even put up with that bully Frankie just for her.
So from all of us, have a lovely feline weekend!
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins unless otherwise noted. No commercial usage without express permission. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
Last week I said goodbye to my beloved 14-year-old 32-inch Sony Trinitron TV. It was the size of a Volkswagen bus and filled up half the living room.
As it was an analog TV and as I don’t have cable or satellite service, I had to use a digital converter box which completely died about a year ago. Before that the box became ill and could only show me the top half of the screen and I had to guess what was going on in the bottom half of the screen. Perhaps it was just as well I didn’t know…
I could, however, use it perfectly well to play DVDs.
2015 was the year I lived at Best Buy. I was in there so many times I believe the doorman must have thought I was a homeless person using the restroom (which is very nice, by the way). He stopped greeting me. The sales people came to recognize me and ran off in the opposite direction… after all, why would a little old lady in jeans and a baseball cap who came into the store twice a week and stared at the TVs, talking to herself, be dropping the big bucks on a good TV? I don’t blame them… I’m surprised they didn’t call the cops…
Maybe I’m exaggerating a little… but not by much…
I made it easier on myself because I knew I would either buy a Sony, as that is the brand of TVs I’ve owned for as long as I can remember, or a Samsung as my computer monitor, tablet and smartphone are that brand.
I hate making these kinds of decisions. On top of that, there are so many variations of TV: LED, OLED, curved screen, smart, 4K ultra HD, 3D, blah blah blah…
Then the size… all I knew was I wanted a bigger TV than 32-inch as that is the size I have in my office (Best Buy house brand, Insignia, that I bought on sale at the end of the year maybe a couple of years ago, the previous year’s model, the last box in the store… for a song… and I can’t even sing…)
40-inch? 55-inch? 60-inch? 65-inch? Oh, the agony.
My closest Best Buy (we actually have TWO in our little town of Culver City which must say something about the demographics although I’m not sure what) is a 25-minute walk from my house. Sometimes I walk up there to the Ralphs supermarket, sometimes to treat myself to Panda Express or a Subway sandwich. But I never drive there. It’s a reason for a 50-minute round-trip walk. So I wasn’t only going to Best Buy to look at TVs. At least, that’s my excuse…
Recently one friend purchased a 49-inch Sony 4K smart TV and another decided on the 55-inch. I was beside myself with jealousy.
So one day I was out driving (I only take my car out when I am picking up stuff too heavy or bulky to carry on the bus) when my car made a sudden left turn and drove up Overland Avenue, heading towards the Best Buy at Culver Center. I had no control over the steering wheel or brake. I thought for sure I was in an episode of the X-Files.
Next thing I knew my car was parking at Best Buy. Then I must have blacked out for a while because when I came to I was signing some paperwork.
“What day would be good for delivery?” asked the man in the blue polo shirt, who I had never seen in my life before.
“Uh, uh, Monday I guess,” I heard myself saying.
And so it was done. The Sony 55-inch 4K Ultra HD smart TV was going to be replacing my dear Trinitron.
What can I say, except why didn’t I do it sooner? A couple of people asked me why didn’t I get the 65-inch TV. I don’t know… I’m very happy with the 55-inch. The wall it is installed on goes from 17 feet to 20 feet high so I could easily install an IMAX screen there. But it isn’t always about the biggest. I’m comfortable with the size of it. And the picture is fabulous!
Saturday morning I was watching one of my favorite shows, Wild Photo Adventures with Doug Gardner on KCET Link, an independent Los Angeles public TV Station.
As the Trinitron no longer takes up all the space on the cabinet (and the flat screen is installed on the wall) there is now room for the felines in front of the TV.
Freddie is still in the discovery stage as you can see at the top of this page.
Satisfied that everything was okay, he felt comfortable enough to have a wash.
Not wanting Freddie to steal all the thunder, Frankie decided to disturb his peaceful spot (what else is new?).
Previously, Frankie had discovered the new Blu Ray player that I bought specifically for this TV. (So far I’m just playing my old DVDs.) His favorite new trick is to press the on/off button when I am watching a movie, aarrrggghh… FRANKIE!!!!!
So in order to foil him I put this miniature London double decker bus in front of the switch, as you can see in the above photo.
But to no avail. Frankie figured that one out in a nano-second and batted it on to the floor.
I give up!
I don’t have a photo of him in the act, but the first night I had the TV, I heard Pharoah pitter pattering down the stairs and running across the living room floor. He jumped up on the TV cabinet, sniffed every square inch thoroughly, then when he was sure it was all in order, he ran back up the stairs.
So I think we are all agreed now that this was a good purchase.
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins unless otherwise noted. No commercial usage without express permission. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
My senior cat Pharoah’s favorite morning stance… soaking up the rays while meditating.
My gentle giant Freddie… I wish I had his temperament as absolutely nothing bothers him… including Frankie!
Frankie the Terror… the youngest and smallest cat in the household… nothing and nobody stands in his way… fortunately he is also very sweet and loving when he wants to be.
The felines wish you a Meowy and Purry 2016!
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins unless otherwise noted. No commercial usage without express permission. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
I’ve posted about Pharoah’s condition previously. He was and remains a feral cat. He was born with an auto-immune virus common to feral cats that affects his right eye. I’ve been able to keep it under control with Lysene treats and granules that I mix in his wet food. But from time to time he has a flare-up that impacts his general well-being.
Two different vets have told me the only resolution is to remove the eye. But as a feral cat he won’t let me get near him with any medication that would be required after the surgery so that is out of the question.
A month or so ago he disappeared for a couple of days and I began to wonder if he had gone somewhere to die quietly, as cats will do.
I discovered he was living under the daybed in my office. It is pitch black under there and even with a flashlight I can’t get in far enough to see anything.
The only way I found out was because, being the good boy he is, he was coming out to use the litter box upstairs then disappearing under the bed again. I put his wet food under the bed and he was gobbling it up, so I knew he was not planning on leaving us any time soon.
After a couple of weeks of this he came out from under to nap on top of the bed. His eye was really scary looking… I won’t go into details. It seemed as if all the crud that was making him ill had come out through the eye. Then it cleared up.
As you can see from the photo above, which was taken just a few days ago, not only is he back to “normal” but his eye is looking better than it has in a long, long time. I have my fingers crossed that this is the last bout with the virus.
The other news is that on Saturday we will be celebrating the second anniversary of our bad boy Frankie’s adoption. Doesn’t he look like a little angel in the photo above? Only when he’s sleeping. The rest of the time he terrorizes the household.
I knew what I was getting into when I first adopted him. I went back to the shelter three times to make sure there wasn’t a more suitable cat, but there he was jumping up and down in his cage making sure he attracted my attention each time. So what could I do?
The attendant, I am sure anxious to get rid of that trouble maker, assured me he would settle down in time. TIME? Like the end of the world, maybe?
Unfortunately, the lotto ticket under Frankie’s ear did not turn out to be a winner. I keep trying.
I cannot ignore Freddie. After I took the photo of Pharoah, Freddie came running over and stuck his face in the lens. Really, I can see this portrait hanging in a museum of contemporary art, what do you think?
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins. No commercial usage without express permission. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
According to his adoption papers, my champagne tabby Pharoah was born eleven years ago today, September 4, 2004.
This photo was taken when he first arrived in his new home at six months old, ten and a half years ago.
At the time I was studying Egyptian history in the Archaeology Program at UCLA. As he is the color of the desert sand and fond of posing in the sphynx position, I named him Pharoah.
A couple of years ago I didn’t think he would last much longer. He has an auto-immune condition common with feral cats (which manifests itself in his eye) and he wasn’t doing well.
But now he has rebounded and using yet another of his nine lives.
He is a happy cat and never complains. They say cats don’t really smile, but don’t tell that to Pharoah, as he always has a big one on his face.
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
One of Pharoah’s favorite things to do is to camouflage himself as a pillow.
These are four of my favorite photos of the “P” from recent years.
If you have been following Feline Friday, you may know by now that my champagne tabby Pharoah is a feral cat. He loves to have his back scratched but only on his terms. If he decides I am sitting in a non-threatening position he will walk up along side my chair and present his backside to be stroked.
Or sometimes he waits for me on the stairs leading out to the deck. He will poke his head through the railings and allow me to pet him on the head. But if I attempt to come around to the other side of the railings he will usually take off. So I have to brush him with my arm through the railings… not an easy task!
Here he is helping me with my filing. The problem is everything is filed under “C” for cat.
Before I remodeled the roof deck Pharoah would often sleep like this. That fence is now gone and replaced with a metal cap. He is not able to jump on to the metal, I suppose because he needed his claws in the wood to help lift him up. I’m happy about that, although his pal Freddie has no problem prancing along that wall and scaring the heck out of me!
And Pharoah’s Number One treat… ta da… pots of juicy green grass! There can never be enough and as soon as I put out a new pot, guess who is the first one to get a bite!
Pharoah has a birthday coming up. On September 4 he will be eleven years old which means we have lived together for ten and a half years. I may have mis-stated his age in another post… I’m bad at keeping track of birthdays. To me he will always be a kitten.
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
My three cats, Pharoah, Freddie and Frankie are a constant source of amusement. So here are some recent photos of their hijinks.
As soon as I am out of bed in the morning, Freddie (black and white) and Frankie (grey and white) race into the bathroom to see who can jump into the bathtub first. I have to turn on a trickle of water so they can get their early morning drink. Because of the drought in California they only get a couple of minutes of this activity. Also because I don’t drink water straight out of the tap and don’t think they should either.
Pharoah (at top) and Freddie taking advantage of the cool tile floor and the breezes wafting in from the front patio door.
Pharoah posing for his close-up. His funky eye is doing really well lately. Hope I haven’t spoken too soon.
He is a feral cat and if I got within three feet of him he would take off in a nanosecond. At this point he is deciding if I am too close.
Frankie and Freddie are checking out the cat carrier that Frankie took a trip in yesterday when we had a big scare.
In the morning I couldn’t find Frankie anywhere in the house. Usually he sleeps on the bed and gets up when I do. After twenty minutes of searching in every nook and cranny in the house and calling his name he still didn’t make an appearance. Then he came out of nowhere, sniffed at his dish in the kitchen and ran off upstairs.
I located him squeezed into the space between a file cabinet and the day bed in my office. What the heck was he doing there? Usually in the mornings is when he is charging up and down the stairs, careening around the living room chasing his toys, jumping on Freddie and generally being a big nuisance while I am trying to make my coffee.
I managed to turn his head up so he was looking at me. The pupil in his right eye was completely dilated… a big black saucer… while his left eye was just a tiny slit.
I looked up the symptoms on the internet and found the term “anisocoria.” There are various causes but the one thing that kept jumping out at me as I read about it on various sites was the advice to take the cat to the vet immediately. So out came the cat carrier and off we went.
The vet spewed out a bunch of technical terms explaining to me why all the reasons for his anisocoria could not be any of the normal causes. She basically looked at me and said she didn’t know what was wrong. Great. All I knew was that Frankie was not himself. Even at the vet he was trying to stay curled up in his carrier when normally he would be jumping all over the room exploring everything.
While we were there anyway I asked her to look at his gums to see how his gingivitis stomatitis was doing. Oh my. I could see his gums were red, raw and bleeding all over again just like his last bout with the disease back in March. Click here to read a post about it. I asked her if this could be the cause of the anisocoria but she didn’t see a correlation. However, it was probably the reason for his odd behavior.
I decided to have a blood panel run anyway, just in case there was some other mysterious illness lurking in his body. She also gave him two follow-up shots for the gingivitis.
In the evening Frankie ate a little dinner then slept the night away on the bed. This morning he ate breakfast and was back to his perky, nuisance self. His right eye is still dilated a little more than the right one but nothing like yesterday.
So I’m thinking the inflammation from the gingivitis did indeed have something to do with the dilation of his eye.
I’m waiting to hear the result of his blood panel today. But at this point it’s a matter of watching him. And as the vet said yesterday, the best decision is probably to have all his teeth removed so he doesn’t have to suffer through this for the rest of his life. So I have to think about that.
This morning he was back helping me with my art project. Maybe you can see from the photo, his right pupil is a teensy bit bigger than the left. But at this moment in time, Frankie is giving everything thumbs up!
And for all you film buffs out there, this last photo is Freddie’s tribute to Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, Through a Screen Door Darkly.
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
Lately we had some hot, humid days. We all had our various, creative ways to keep cool.
Pharoah parked himself by the roof deck door so he could take advantage of any breeze that might drift by.
Freddie camped out on top of the toilet tank by the open bathroom window.
Frankie settled in between my feet on the deck in the cool evening air.
As the summers get hotter and more muggy on the west side of LA, I keep procrastinating about calling someone to fix the A/C, but I need to do it for all of us.
All photos and content copyright roslyn m wilkins. Please feel free to pass along this post via email or social media, but if you wish to use some of our images or text outside of the context of this blog, either give full credit to myself and link to One Good Life in Los Angeles, or contact us for proper usage. Thanks!
This is the guest bed in my loft/office covered with a lovely quilt. No matter how often I straighten out the quilt, this is how it always ends up so I have pretty much given up on tidying it.
RMW: the blog 