Hi guys,

I know I haven't written much lately, so I won't be mad if no one responds to this. I can't expect people to respond to my posts if I don't have/make time to respond to theirs.

Tito is driving me insane. I've got him on a diet = 1/3 cup of weight management food a day. It's what the vet told me to put him on. He's been on this for about six weeks now - I've posted about it a couple times before. He acts absolutely miserable when he's on this restricted intake, and it's making me miserable. He wakes me up in the morning, every morning, about 4:30 AM, trying to get me to feed him. He climbs into the bedroom windowsill and puts his paws all over the blinds, pulling them and scratching them. This makes a horrible, loud noise which wakes me up (my boyfriend, unfortunately, is a heavy sleeper). I have to chase him away with a water bottle, and that usually only deters him for about 10 minutes. I guess I'll have to take down the blinds until we move out and replace them with a curtain (we rent and the blinds technically belong to the landlord). He will also lick my face to wake me up, claw at my hair, meow loudly and pitifully, scratch the carpet, etc. We tried locking him out of the bedroom, but that was worse - he took up the carpet under the bedroom door trying to get in. He made about a 4 inch tear in the carpet and exposed the floor underneath. No telling what the landlord will charge us for that. I'm going to take Tito the vet tomorrow and see what he tells me to do in terms of his diet. For me, it sounds awful, but it might be worth letting him be 1-2 pounds overweight if he'll let me sleep through a night for once. (By the way, Sophie is on this same diet, and she's totally fine with it.)



I wasn't planning on putting up a Christmas tree, because I knew the cats would demolish it. My mom didn't know this, and bought me a fake tree from WalMart. We put it up together and the cats are constantly destroying it. Both of them are constantly tearing into it. They've bent the branches, strewn ornaments all over the house, torn "needles" off, and removed strands of garland and lights. I can't seem to make them stay away from it. I was using the water bottle, but that practically has no effect on them anymore. They just sit there and let me soak them. It's like they know I'll give up eventually. Lately I've been resorting to pulling them out from under the tree by the scruff of their necks and shouting, "No!" but that just doesn't seem to work either. I may end up taking the whole thing down this weekend, which really makes me sad.

I'm so frustrated. I feel like a mother whose kids are out of control and don't listen to her. Now, I love Tito and Sophie with all of my heart. I just need to figure out a way to control them!!! If anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it. I'm seriously at my wits' end. I didn't get to bed until 1:00 am last night - I have to wake up at 6:30 am - and at 4:45 am Tito started in on his usual antics. I grabbed maybe another 1/2 an hour of sleep in short spurts from between 4:30 am and 6:30 am. I can't take this!!!