The Parker Report - July 23, 2015 - 6th Installment

The Parker Report – July 23, 2015 - 6^th Installment

This report covers about two weeks of Parker's activity up to July 23, 2015:

July 14, 2015 – We had to do a job for a client in Napa and she offered to let us bring Parker, so he spent the day with us at her house. We set up his X-pen on a packing blanket in her family room. He had all his comforts of home: His litter box filled with grass, water bowl, grass bag “piňata”, sleeping box and toilet paper tube to chew on. Our client has a small dog so we were a bit concerned about how they would react with each other, but Parker pretty much ignored the dog as the dog stared at him from the outside of his pen. The dog was very good and didn't bark at Parker – he was just curious. Parker was a very good boy too and didn't try to get out of his pen. As long as he knew we were close by he was OK because we would check on him as we walked past to other parts of the house. It's a good thing we had such a nice client that let us bring him because we didn't get home until about 8:00 pm that night, which would have been much too long to leave him by himself at home. We just fed him his dinner before we left the client's house.

The next couple of days Parker was full of mischief:

July 19^th - He Got under the recliner/rocker chair a few times and had to “flush” him out.

He also hopped up onto the 18-inch tall fireplace hearth multiple times.

July 20^th – We had previously removed our subwoofer from our end table (so Parker wouldn't have access to it or the cords) and we placed it on the hearth in hopes that he wouldn't bother it up there. We also had a couple of remote controls (DirecTV and Denon A/V receiver) that we placed on top of the subwoofer “for safe keeping”.

Today Parker hopped up onto the hearth and grabbed one of the remote controls off the subwoofer, jumped off the hearth and hopped a few feet with it still in his mouth.

July 21^st – He went up onto the hearth again and grabbed a different remote and somehow knocked off the battery door and caused one battery to fall out. Then he grabbed the other remote and hopped all the way into the living room with it in his mouth. (He's very talented.)

The same week, Brad built a wood frame for under our bed to block access to the airbed pump. Parker wasn't too happy about this since he likes to go under there. I left a wedge pillow on the floor next to the bed and he used it as a “spring board” to jump up onto the bed and grab a wooden back scratcher off of Brad's night stand...three times!

Today he also played with a hard hollow blue plastic ball with holes in it. It was given to us by our friends when they gave us Harley (our lop-eared bunny). Harley never really played with the toys (I guess because he was older), but Parker is young and likes to play so I thought I'd try it with him to see what he does. He tossed it around for at least a half hour until I noticed blue “shavings” coming off, from chewing on it. I took it away so he wouldn't get sick from it. I did take a video of him playing with it before that though.

Thursday, July 23, 2015 – Since I took away the blue ball, I went shopping for a replacement toy and bought a pack of three plastic jingle cat balls with bells inside. They were smaller and more his size so he had fun grabbing and tossing them and pushing them with his nose.

He was also having fun with two sizes of oatmeal containers. He sticks his head inside and lifts them up, plus he chews on the edges.

We got him a “Fur Buster” pet comb and we're trying to get him used to it.

Before the comb, I tried using our brushing mitt that Harley always liked because it probably felt like a massage to him. I thought Parker would like it too, but I had the opposite reaction.

I tried brushing him with it and he kept trying to turn around and bite the thing. I finally had to hide it behind my back so he would stop trying to attack it. Then he was looking for it.

That's all the fun and excitement up to now. Stay tuned for more.