My dear gray tabby, dwyr, was very agile and loved high places. He liked to perch up on top of doors all the time. He could also jump up onto the highest shelves in my apartment and never, ever knocked anything over or even disturbed it. This one day, though… he came racing into the bedroom, leapt up onto the dresser, slid across the entire length of it and vanished over the side. I must have laughed for a good five minutes.
My Siamese girl, Sapphire, is afraid of thunder. It’s bad enough when she’s awake. When thunder crashes, she puffs up and looks terrified. But it’s worse when she’s asleep. She likes to sleep in the bedroom windowsill, which has the ancient large Venetian horizontal blinds. If thunder crashes when she’s sleeping there, she wakes up, all scared, gets into a fight with the blinds, loses that fight, and then falls out of the window. And then she’s pissed at ME because I am in charge of the weather, and I’m supposed to make sure that she never hears thunder.
She and my daughter’s cat, Achilles, got used to the living room being fully carpeted. We decided to recarpet, and so pulled up the old carpeting to find a nice hardwood floor, which we like much better than carpeting. However, the cats soon found out that claws just don’t get much traction on wood flooring, and we’d see them zooming across the living room, but be unable to make the quick turn at the end of the dining room.
Our newest kitty is a real klutz. He envied the way that Sapphire leapt easily into the freestanding bathroom sink, and decided that he was big enough to do that too. Claws just don’t get any traction on that sink. He kept trying, though. He’s full grown now, but I’d say that he misjudges the leap about a tenth of the time, so every now and then we see him with his front paws hooked over the edge of the sink, and his hind legs and paws are scrambling madly for traction.
“For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.”
My Blue Persian (Keyser Soze) was playing a game and went to run up the backyard. He leaps like Kimba the white lion. He went to leap up the three steps and missed and went face first into a limestone brick.
Good thing he already has a flat face.
The lovely Ophelia is so much happier now she’s got a bed she can’t fall out of.
My other cat, Shadow, is a big fan of the back of the sofa. We have only recently had central heating installed and there’s a big radiator behind the sofa. He’s only just realised that if he lays on the back of the sofa, he’ll get a lovely warm blast of air for a few hours - he hasn’t fallen off yet, or not as far as I know, but he does tend to slide down the side of the cushion towards the arm of the sofa and then has to stop himself by stretching out his paws to grip the cushions.
His next favourite spot is the chair in my study because the sun gets into that room for quite a lot of the day and it’s the perfect spot for a prolonged bit of snoozing.
Our Aerishad a bad ear infection which left her with a permanent balance disability. She has a noticeable stagger when she walks and sometimes falls over when she jumps up on the couch or makes a sharp turn while running. She’s very affectionate, though - so much so that one of her nicknames is JATH Cat, for Joined At The Hip, as she spends as much of her time as possible snuggled up to my wife (pic with her bud Cleocatra).
One of our first cats was a little black Persian named Elke, who would regularly race madly down the hallway into the kitchen, scrabble desperately for traction on the turn, and slide sideways into the refrigerator. Between the slippery linoleum and the long feathers of fur growing between her toes, traction was not an option.
Cleocatra!
That’s clever.
Years ago, we had a cat whom we named (The Great) Catsby.
An aside: I like that thing they’re advertising on tv where your cat gets on this ramp-looking thing (forgot the name-can you tell) and trims her own nails. It’s 19.95 but looks like it works, plus it has “kitty-crack” embedded, so she’ll be sure to use it.
Only problem is, I don’t think catnip lasts forever" does it?
We’d get one for our Bert (looking to adopt an “Ernie” when we move to a bigger place), but he was declawed when we adopted him.:mad:
Thanks
Q
Doesnt matter, all cats will sharpen the ends of their paws, claw, claws in caps or declawed =) and you can re nip it with catnip spray