Cat-proofing: It's a major effort in this household. Teddy, who is now between 9 and 10 months old, has grown into a sometime holy terror of teenage-ness. He loves attention of any kind, typical adolescent that he is, whether it's positive or negative. The evidence suggests he doesn't cut up much when no one is watching, but when there's a witness, well, look out!
My electric oven has a fan that continues to run after then oven is turned off, presumably to cool it faster. Since the noise of the fan is annoying, I often leave the door ajar to speed the temperature drop. It has a stop at about 35 or 40o, and fortunately, when the door is open the light inside is on. The other night, about an hour after dinner, KLK called me frantically to the kitchen. There, resting happily on the top rack of the oven, was Teddy. When we yanked him out, our hearts in our throats, he was nice and toasty and quite puzzled as to what all the fuss was about. [I did not want to wait the 25 seconds it would have taken to grab the camera. Teddy's ability to get himself into potentially fatal situations is beyond my limited human imagination. I was very upset.]
Ever since Winston was this age, we've kept the toilet lids down. That's because little Winston so much loved to play in the toilet that he would squeeze himself between the seat and the closed lid so he could reach inside to splash. After a few years we could leave the telephone books off the toilet lids because he finally learned not to even try to lift the weighted lid. We've not abandoned the habit of putting the lids down on the toilets in both bathrooms (his and ours) however, and it's a good thing, because Teddy likes to drop his toys into water too.
Now, you may notice something else a little odd about the bathroom view above. Yes, the tissue box is upside down. That's because it's so much fun to extend your claws into it and dig up the nice, soft, shreddy tissues!
Batting the mini-blind cords is also extremely entertaining. At all windows but one, we've installed, at great price, very nice cord cleats. Of course they're a pain in the buttinsky because the cords are so long (my windows are very tall) that every time I want to lift or lower the blinds it's long, winding chore...
Apparently, used q-tips are temptingly reminiscent of mice and other furry little prey. So to keep Teddy from helping himself in the bathroom waste can, I had to invest in this nice stainless steel lidded version:
But what he does like is clawing certain upholstered furniture pieces. I have heard from several sources that cats don't like to get their paws sticky, so I invested in wide, double-sided tape sold for the express purpose of cat repulsion (note, by the way, what the model cat is doing in the catalog listing of the sticky tape. See how discouraged from clawing the furniture he is?). You will note that, a) there's at least one claw-dislodged thread sticking up over the sticky tape, and b) the tape has been slightly lifted off the fabric. That's because, it turns out, it's fun to chew!
