Eek!

[desperance]

In which the boys conspire to stop me dwelling on stuff...

My house has more stairs than seems feasible, given its smallness. Specifically, there's a flight up to a half-landing, from which two further flights ascend, one at right-angles to the first and the other doubling back on it. This means that the top landing has a looong drop down over the banister to ground, at the foot of that first flight. My cats have always enjoyed jumping on and off that banister; Sophie-cat used to use it as a halfway point to jumping onto my shoulders. I became quite blasé about their blaséness. Ahem. The boys exist to shatter my complacency.

I have a chest of drawers on the top landing, which stands a few inches higher than the banister. At the moment there is a couple of ficus trees on it, in big pots. Both boys like to hang around there, shredding the leaves and ripping off the branches (I do not believe the trees will survive this season) - and playing tag around the pots, pouncing viciously on each other.

When they do this, if I'm watching, usually one of them will back away. Onto the banister. And go on fighting. Above a fifteen-foot drop. The banister is varnished, rounded wood, and its poor footing is evidenced by the quantity of deep scratches in that varnish, where cats have found themselves hanging on for dear life.

Eek.

Comments

[possumqueen.livejournal.com]

Yay, hard-wired testosterone! Even when the logical source of it may be gone. I always saw big differences between my male and female cats even when they were neutered. (This is just straight cat-talk, no covert implications. Cats is cats and people is people. Primates and pussycats have distinct functions in the ecosphere.) Do you think the brain is hard-wired in certain basic ways? I do.