Kitty Games

I have no photos I can show you of the kitty boys' most recent and excellent adventures.  Mainly because I was so shocked at the time that a photograph was the last thing on my mind.

It all started a couple of days ago.  I've shown you the photograph of the display shelves in my living room, and how they're seasonally decorated with snowmen or owls.  Because I have far more snowmen than owls, I guess the bottom shelf looked too ... inhabited to Tugby because although he prowled amongst the snowmen he never did any damage.  But there was lots of space between owls, and although I have some relatively heavy metal owls we moved them off the shelves because they started to fall onto the landing below; they were too heavy to land on any passers by, accidentally.  I left a couple of larger owls on the shelf, thinking that they were visually imposing and would be safe.  Not so.  The other night, one of my ceramic owls took flight, and landed in pieces on the stairs below.  Tugby just happened to be beside him when it happened, and I don't know who was more shocked:  Tugby or the owl.  You could almost see a cartoon caption with the words "I thought he was a bird, Mum, and birds can fly!" coming out of his mouth.

Here you see a photograph of the display before the owls were moved.  The ceramic owl who is no longer among us is directly to the right of Hooty McOwl.  Now, here is a picture of Tugby in his favourite perch.  He loves to rocket across the floor and end up on the stereo shelves, or clinging to the bottom display shelf with all four paws.  He scares the living daylights out of me, that one day I'll come home and find him sprawled on the landing below with a broken leg.  I can't think of any way to cat proof the display shelves.  I can understand the joie de vivre that Tuggy has when he tear asses across the living room and onto the shelves.  There is a painful lesson in my Tuggy's future, and I can't do anything to prevent it.  Keep your fingers crossed!


Then this morning I was getting dressed when I heard a peculiar noise in the kitchen.  It wasn't a 'something's broken and it wasn't me noise'.  It wasn't a 'I'm sure I can get catfood out of this cupboard if I just paw at it for a while' noise.  And it wasn't a 'Mum isn't here so I'm going to pound the daylights out of you' noise.  But it needed to be investigated.  When I went into the kitchen, Huck was crouched on the top of the pantry beside my garden door.  Which happens to be at least 6 feet in the air.  He has been fascinated by bugs on the ceiling recently, and I guess he finally figured out how to get closer to them.  He saw me standing there with my mouth open, jumped onto the kitchen table and then back to floor level.  I picked him up, checked for damage, and gave him a cuddle.


I have a sinking feeling we'll be spending some time at the vet's this summer, with the possibility of broken bones.  These are not my first cats, but they certainly are keeping me on my toes with my throat in my mouth.