Have you ever found your cat on top of some piece of furniture, cabinet or shelving right up to ceiling height and wondered how the heck he/she got there? I have an antique phone booth in my family room that stands 6’8” tall. This isn’t the type of phone booth you used to find on street corners, but a solid oak piece of furniture like they used to have in upscale hotel lobbies. I awoke one morning to what sounded like a cat in pain. When I finally located where the sound was coming from, I discovered my Jada on top of the phone booth, howling because she was afraid to jump down. After getting out the ladder to get her down, I contemplated how she could have possibly gotten up there. There is no furniture near enough to the phone booth to serve as a launching pad.
I thought I’d heard the last of the frantic howling until it resounded through the house the next day. Yep, she was back on top of the phone booth! This was about the time my son came to the door, so I enlisted his 5’11” stature to reach up and get her down. We both tried to figure out how she was getting up there but came to no logical conclusion. Better question was, “what was the attraction?”
I couldn’t believe it, but she was back up there the very next day. I tried to coax her down with treats, but it didn’t work. By this time I was getting bored with this game, so I decided to leave her up there yowling her head off. I figured if the cat on the news could jump five stories from a burning building, land on a patch of grass and walk away, Jada could figure out that it wouldn’t kill her to bail off a 6’ phone booth. I figured wrong. She stayed on top of the phone booth all night and late into the next morning. Not only did I have to drag out the clumsy ladder again but noticed that the ladder was the least of my inconveniences since she had deposited a hefty pile of her “nightly constitutional” for me to clean up. My patience and sense of humor flew out the window and I grabbed her by the nape of the neck like a mother cat and lofted her into the air. She landed on the carpet by the sofa with her feelings hurt but otherwise totally unscathed. I guess her first experience with flight was her last, because she hasn’t been up there since. Who knows what goes on in their minds; they’re like little kids!
I couldn’t stand not being able to figure out how she was getting up there, so I turned to Professor Google of Whats-a-matta U to get the answer. I learned that the average 8-10 lb adult house cat can jump 8 feet straight up into the air in a single bound. That means that if your cat spots a spider, fly, palmetto bug or something else with six or more legs on the ceiling, they can nail it in one fell swoop. We can only hope that the six-legged invader isn’t sitting in the middle of your ceiling fan. That could certainly break you off a piece of that Kit Kat. 😊
