This could be really bad (or "Cats!!!" *sigh*)

[carbonel]

From time to time, people have made jokes about my cats being able to get up on the beams across my living room, and I just smiled, because I thought it was too high up.

Today, Morwen figured out how to jump from the speaker to the beam over the fireplace -- not a ceiling beam, but a serious jump down. Random saw her, and followed, and both of them spent some time on the fireplace beam -- where both of them wanted to eat the pins in the bowl of pins that I'd stuck up there to be safe from cats.

Eventually they both got down, and I figured that was that. But then Morwen apparently decided to let her success with that go to her head, and made a mighty leap from the top of the cat tree to one of the ceiling beams. She's still up there, because there's no way I can get up there to get her down. Right now, she's asleep and (as far as I can tell) perfectly happy. But I'm not sure she can get down safely, and I don't want to turn the lights off in the living room until she does.

I suppose that having done it once, she's not going to forget how, either.

ETA: No cat skeletons on the beam -- she did get down safely. This time.

Comments

[aedifica]

oof. Yeah, not the kind of thing they forget how to do. Hopefully they'll decide it's boring!

[pameladean]

Ack! That is rather worrisome. Perhaps you need to put in a ramp for them to come down.

P.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

A ramp covered with some carpet or jute backing for better traction (and general claw-stropping as well).

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Cats can jump really well. I wouldn't worry about it.

[msmoat.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. We shouldn't have talked about it, should we? I'm glad she got safely down. This is really not good.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Glad she made it down.

Jumping down onto the couch is probably one of the safer choices for them, the padding should help some. And they have a lot stronger bones for their mass then we do, so it's harder to damage them. Or just jumping back to the cat tree; it has a good grippy covering, and it's higher by a lot.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry about it; that seems like perfectly ordinary cat behavior. Maybe not using the high places as catsafe places would be good, though.

Serendipity is still on her mission to destroy all lamps and socks, so she hasn't really started in on the stunt climbing. Though she is practicing on window screens, so I'm sure she will be ready soon.

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

Good Grief! It seems like I'm constantly baby-proofing my home/life, even though Zelda is 19 years old... She still gets into new, unexpected jams.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fairly normal behavior to me! Cats can generally get down from whatever place they can get up to, and they can jump a long way! The only time I really panicked was when one of my cats got out onto a very, very narrow first (US: second) floor windowsill, where she could not turn round - and sat crying at the end, because the people next door (it is a terraced townhouse) do not have an outside windowsill. (They also, at that time, had Basenjiis). Eventually, inamac scragged her by making a long arm while leaning out of said neighbours' window.