I still have my trail cam set up behind the coop. We get lots of neighborhood cat photos. How many can you spot in the photo below?

I find five. Mr Tom, the long-haired white is mostly obscuring Mama Cat, but you can see her tail. There is a gray tabby on the step, short-haired black female is on the right, and I suspect that the two reflective eyes seen through the trees in the background is Shadow. These are the usual suspects that hang out back there.

Thor, who is not quite eight months old, technically is still a kitten, but he does not look at all like a kitten.

Thor weighed in at 12.8 pounds, which is almost a pound heavier than Izzy. He gets plenty of exercise. His tail and legs are thick, especially compared to our other cats. Big boy.

Like most kittens, Thor like to lay in awkward places. Half over his bed, half on the arm of the chair, half on my pillow. He really likes that I moved my computer into the closet with a nice fuzzy rug on the floor. I took this picture because it looks like he has been skewered by three posts, when really one leg is between two.

Izzy is not happy with the new kitten and does not appreciate having to share litter boxes. Thor loves his litter boxes and is very good at digging and burying. Izzy has been marking and ruining rugs. To help Izzy out, I put down sand in the catio. The long summer heat killed all the plants in there and left hard packed clay, so I cleaned up the debris and spread bags of all-purpose sand in the main area.

I’ve read that owners should have the same number of litter boxes as cats, plus one. We have that, except at night when Izzy and Sophie are separated. So I added a nice large corner litter box to Izzy’s nighttime area (our bedroom).

I also picked up all the bathmats that were being used inappropriately, and replaced the most critical mat, right outside the shower, with a bamboo wood mat.