An important thing to remember, though, is that cats are going to naturally be interested in new things and in things that peak their curiosity. A lot of time, those items are not the cat-centric ones that you have purchased for them.
Pandora and Isley look like they are thinking,
"Aren't these flowers lovely to look at?"
What they are actually thinking is,
"Could you please leave the room now?
We'd like to really appreciate these."
A seasoned pet owner knows that those flowers get to move to a non-kitty area anytime a person isn't within 6 feet of them.
Sometimes, though, it isn't as easy to predict the future. For example, we have learned that when something new is added to the house, the cats will notice. Immediately. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it wasn't there before.
When I put up new curtains in our bedroom, I thought long curtains would be wonderful visually. I did not think about the cats and how my putting up such curtains would be an unspoken invitation to climb merrily to the ceiling. Nor did I think about what letting the fabric pool on the carpet would mean.
I basically made a hiding place for them to use
when they want to sneak up on one another.
The best part of this was how stealthy Aphrodite thought she was.
Those curtains were a stressful series of major failures and minor successes long before the cats got involved. Finding ones that I liked that weren't too expensive. Ordering them. Waiting for them to ship. Finally having all the panels get here. The first time I thought my project was finished, I stepped back to admire my work and immediately noticed that something was off.
Still, it took me a minute.
Then, I think I may have cried. It took TWO months to get to this point.
So, someone had returned a panel in the wrong package. Which had then been resold to me. I had to return it and place a new order for another panel. And I really, really hated how the one set of panels had rings and the other didn't. But I bought the rings on clearance and that was all they had. I went to 5 versions of a certain chain in order to find enough to eventually do all 4 panels. When it all finally came together, my curtains were lovely. For about an hour.
It was then that I discovered that sale curtain rods may not, in fact, be able to withstand the weight of 4 curtain panels when several kitties are added to them (you know, on their way to the ceiling). The entire curtain rod came out of the wall. I didn't hear it fall. I just saw about 3 cats running at super-sonic speed from out of our bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs, into the corner of our family room behind the couch. In our world, that means there is now a scene of the crime and that they have fled said scene.
A larger, more expensive (but worth it!) curtain rod replaced this and has weathered well. Watching the cats was entertaining and hilarious, and we immediately had to erase from our minds that one hour when the curtains were beautiful. They still are quite lovely. They don't get climbed on as often (I guess the novelty wears off with time) and they are a couple inches shorter due to a good run through the washer every month.
Curtains are going to come down. So we put them up again. They're going to have little claw holes in them. They're going to get covered in cat hair. And they're going to be the a key part of some adorable, laughing-so-hard-your-stomach-hurts moments. The kitties helped me let go of my need for everything to look perfect. In doing this, they somehow made everything perfect themselves.
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