The tails of two kitties, part 5 - Leaping Lizards, Raj!

Raj, oh Raj! You are a little terror.

My little kitty likes to be up high (what cat doesn't?) and he found a nice spot on top of the bookcase. This particular bookcase sits right beside a staircase, overlooking the bottom step. Raj decided that he wanted to sleep in this lovely high position, nestled on top of two games that were being stored there. After pushing on them to the point where they were almost ready to fall off, the darling little kitty was sent on his skittering way across the floorboards and the games rescued before they became a mighty mess.

Clearly not satisfied with his other sleeping choices, Raj decides that he'd like to venture there again (many times). The games had been removed but that's not really the problem. No, that would be the printer that sits on the desk portion of the bookcase. It was blocking his path down from his high perch. So what does my dear little kitty do? Why, he uses the balustrade as a place to jump to.

Yes, I freaked out. Yes, I thought the cat was going to plummet to the ground and I really did think I'd be rushing him to the vet with broken bones. Mister nimble feet was fine but this poor person wasn't. My visions of a broken cat and a little minion in tears weren't going away, so I had to fix it.

My solution was a little furniture movement. Now there is a storage cube that sits on the opposite wall against the window. (The gap is probably no more than half a meter.) I'd like to have the area void of things to stop his antics but unfortunately I don't have the space to be doing that.

Naturally Marley and Raj are watching and curious to the new placement of their beds and investigate. Not satisfied with using the cat tree placed beside the storage cube, Raj decides that he'd like to jump to the balustrade to get down and almost slipped in the process. (I think I have grey hairs now.)

Now faced with another issue, I went through many ideas and websites trying to find something that would stop him from falling off the edge. After doing a lot of measuring and searching through the website for the local hardware store, we were all stumped. What to do with the area?

My internet savvy brother offered a solution, one metal wall art that is not only decorative and not so bad to look at but is millimeters off what I needed. So he ordered it for me, the blessed thing arrived the next day. In the meantime, I put the water squirter on the edge of the balustrade to stop the little darling and so this poor freaked out soul could sleep well that night.

The wall art was installed, a rectangle shape and a picture of birds on branches. It looks reasonable. (I can't say as I'm overly fussed by it but it keeps me sane, so it's fine.) Marley and Raj both inspected it, Marley lost interest almost instantly. Raj walks behind it on the narrow space left on the balustrade, he even tried to climb it. (Thankfully only once, he may have actually listened when he got yelled at!) Oh and he tried to chew it.

I'm just going to bang my head on the wall for a little stress relief.