Good morning Lizards. Clear with a few clouds and cool in Philadelphia this morning. Allergy levels are acceptable, but still annoying.

Tuxedo Cat had her annual vet visit yesterday. Won’t have test results until tomorrow, but everything looked good beyond her being overweight. (She put on a pound of weight in the past year, a 10% increase.) Time for reduced chow amounts and *no bacon*. (Not that see gets much in the first place.)

Box from Amazon arrived yesterday. Two books for me and experimental bird-like toys for the cats and me to play with.

(1) Rubberband powered ornithopter. Cheap, and rated a failure. It winds up OK, but does all it’s flapping in the first 3-4 seconds and then does a poor glide after that point. Noisier than I thought it would be (which startles the cats) and I would get about the same amount of cat entertainment by getting/building a bird-like balsa glider for them to watch and chase. (Which might be the next idea to try out.) They do watch it fly and go sniff it after it lands, but more work than the R/C copter for the effect it has.

(2) R/C ornithopter. More expensive than (1), but was on sale and thus acquired for the same cost as the R/C copter (Drone #1). Similar in idea in that it powers off the remote unit and can then run for 15 or so minutes.

Comes with “bird sounds” that luckily I can immediately turn off. Simple controls like the copter; lateral (left/right) and power (low to high). Similar to the copter the lateral controls have almost no effect, so it’s basically on its own going around the apartment. Power is sufficient to make it climb or fall in a somewhat controllable manner. Tends to run into a wall and sort of “stick” there as long as you keep the wings flapping.

The flapping is noisier than I thought it would be. Less annoying to the cats than the copter, but still a bit startling. They do want to chase it though. Problem is that the space and control limitations mean that it tend to climb to the ceiling or get stuck on a wall and doesn’t provide much for them to do but watch and wait for it to crash - at which point they can go sniff at it.

Rated as a limited failure. With some practice I might get it working better in the available space. Or maybe a test run out in the hallway, though that is limited time/space to take the cats to since there is human traffic there.

Overall I was not too surprised by these results. Better controls for R/C stuff costs more, and I don’t really have the space and desire to go that way. And I get cost effective “chase flying stuff” for at least one of the cats using stick-string-feather(s) toys and tossing stuff for them to chase after. Heck, putting out a few plastic grocery bags for them to rattle and hide behind, or an empty cardboard box, provides them a degree of entertainment.

However, I still have issues with Tuxedo Cat sweeping the table or counter clear of objects she can move when she gets bored. No broken dishes or glassware recently, but that could rapidly change.