Fat-Fat's Grand Adventure

Over the last week or so, The Fidginator has had some serious cabin fever.  He's been pawing furiously at my window and crying by the front door every time I come within 5 feet of it.  When it's nice outside, he greatly enjoys sitting outside near the garden in a large, wire dog crate.  He also has a stroller, in which he sits for lovely walks around the neighborhood.  His favorite activity, however, is going for walks on his leash.  Well, and by "walk" I mean he scampers 4 feet and falls down...then scampers 4 feet and flops over...then scampers 4 feet...anyway, you get the picture.  Regardless of his choppy exercise style, he loves being outside, and will bury himself in the middle of bushes if I'm not paying attention and gets the opportunity.  Have you ever tried to extract a 13.5 lb. cat from the center of an Azalea bush?  It's a tricky process.  Especially when said cat is crying as loudly as possible because he doesn't want to leave, and all your neighbors come outside to make sure you're not strangling that poor kitty.

Anyway, because it has been a whopping 40-60 degrees Fahrenheit here in Florida, it's been too cold for my little Indy Jones to spend much extended time outside.  To solve this problem and to get Fidget some time to lark about, I thought I'd take him to our local Petsmart.  It's warm enough in there, and he can run-and-stop-and-run-and-stop all over the damn store if he likes.  Turns out, we had a great time.  My *very* patient boyfriend (Chris) came with me to assist in wrangling the Fidg, and together we were able to let him explore quite a bit of the store.

We walked Fidget through the door of Petsmart in his stroller to let him get acclimated, but after 5 minutes he was pawing to get out and walk around.  I went to put his harness on him and...it didn't fit.  Hmm.  Apparently Fat-Fat has gained some fat-fat, so he had to stay in the stroller until we could buy him a new harness.  We wheeled him over to the cat section and found (big surprise) that NONE of the cat harnesses fit him.  Not one.  Plan B?  My cat can wear a dog harness, then.  We found a harness that is meant to fit small-medium dogs and it worked wonderfully.  One of the staff members even told us that Fidget weighs as much as her dog does.  Great, thanks, that's...embarrassing.  Once the new harness was bought and fitted, he was allowed on the floor to slink around.

First stop:  the pet training ring:

Fidget thought that little cubby hole was pretty cool, and sat nicely for several pictures.  However, he soon became bored of the enclosed space, so we opened the door and he army crawled his way to the next interesting thing.

For those of you that don't know, Petsmart does a "Santa Claws" event a few weekends in December.  They bring in a dude in a Santa suit and you can get a picture taken with your dog and Santa.  Santa didn't happen to be there at 7pm on a Friday night, but the DISPLAY was still set up.  After a few fruitless attempts at getting an adorable holiday picture of Fidget, I gave up and told my boyfriend to hold the little monkey down and sit with him.  Here is a picture of Fidget not giving a rat's ass and Chris looking sincerely annoyed with me:

Chris then thought it would be entertaining to introduce my cat to the finches and canaries.  I believe "entranced" would be a good word to describe my stripey cat.  He was grabbing the bars with his claws, and did...not...blink.  Not once.  I almost expected his little jaw to drop to the floor and his tongue to loll onto the tile:

We let him stay there for a few minutes, and then started to fear that he would have a fit and try and eat them.  Since I didn't feel like paying 30 bucks for a masticated canary, we left and took him to see the fish, which I felt were a little safer for him to view.  Fidget cared about the fish for about 0.75 seconds, and then wanted to leave and see other things.  He gazed at the fish as a person might stare at a piece of modern art while thinking, "this is so stupid."

After being in the store for about 45 minutes, it seemed that Fidget had had enough sensory overload.  We headed toward the checkout where Chris kindly gave Fidget his credit card to max out:

Overall, it was a good day for the fat, stripey one.  Petsmart may have to be a more regular outing, especially since the staff and the other customers loved him (and by loved, I mean they pointed and laughed at him).