Never has there been a truer saying, the messes cats get themselves into are hair raising. Here are just a few of the catastrophes we have encountered.
Smokey one of the childhood kittens was fascinated by the gold fish in the fish tank in the front room and would spend hours looking at it, following the fish around the tank with her eyes from the arm of the settee The fish tank was was cat proofed and placed on the middle shelf of a shelving unit. The space above the tank was enough for an adult human to comfortably put the fish food in but not big enough for a cat. The fish tank was surrounded by books on either side, so there was no room for a curious cat to sit and scoop out any fish with their paws either. The tank had been pulled to the front of the shelf so there was no room for her to sit in front of the tank.
Where there is a will there is a way.
Smokey had spent many an hour on the arm of the chair eyeballing the fish and plotting how she could get them, she had come up with a plan. The family were going out and would be gone for some time, now was her chance. No Member of the family would be able to stop her, the fish tank was her oyster.
When the family came home as usual through the front door into the living room they were greeted by the sight of Smokey in the the fish tank doing the doggy paddle with the fish swimming in and out of her legs. If she put her feet on the floor of the tank her head went under water. She was alternating the doggy paddle with the sinking changing as she got tired or ran out of breath. When the family found her she was tired and struggling to keep the doggy paddle up.
How she got in there we can only surmise. She would have had a real struggle to get in but there was no way once she was in that she could get out. If the family had arrived home later she may have drowned. As it was they had a very wet soggy and grumpy cat to extract from the tank.
Smokey mentioned above was one of a brood of kittens born to Kato and we think the litter may have been blessed with the stupid gene. One of those kittens Smokeys sibling was very accident prone. There used to be a problem with the coal fired boiler that heated the radiators and the water. Often the hot water had to be run off from the tank before it reached boiling point, running a bath was a good way of doing this. One of the family had decided to run a bath and had turned the hot water on to fill the bath but hadn't turned the cold water tap on. The kitten eager to see what was going on came springing up the stairs, ping ping ping it hopped into the bathroom ping ping across the floor and ping on to the side of the bath and before they could stop him he had pinged into the bath. The poor little thing rocketed out of the bath. Unfortunately he had burnt himself and had to be treated for burns his fur came of his legs and he looked very much the worse for wear. After that it became the family rule that cold water went into the bath first.
Once the poor little kittens fur had grown back and he was fully recovered he was allowed to venture out of the house into the garden. Dad this particular day was having problems with his car and was working underneath. He was draining the Sump oil out of the car into sandwich box. Kitten seeing dad went ping ping ping across the lawn under the car and pinged straight into the sump oil. Covered from head to toe the kitten had to be washed with washing up liquid to remove all the oil this took many washes and one irate kitten. Afterwards the kitten refused to wash itself anymore and hence forth had to have baths every so often.
We had purchased a new swing bin for the kitchen ( need I go on). Wispa was fascinated she could see us put things in and the top swing back. She could smell the aromas that only a cat could love and wanted to get at them, which was why we bought it in the first place. Our old bin had no lid and keeping the marauding cats out was a nightmare. If we put a lid on we couldn't get in easily but it kept the cats out and without the lid we would have a kitchen festooned in the morning with the detritus of the week.
Like all the other cats she waited till we had gone out to investigate. We had emptied the bin before we went out and had thought no more about it. When we arrived home again there was a plaintive mewing coming from the kitchen. We located her in the bin but she must have been in there some time. The bin was saturated with condensation and we hauled out one very soggy cat. Needless to say she gave the bin a very wide berth after that.
Fortunately although curiosity has hampered, scared and wounded the cats curiosity has never killed any of our cats.
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