What was that whole thing about curiosity and cats...?

Greg has nicknamed Lefty "Sir Edmund Hillary" (as if those cats need any more nicknames!). I had to have him remind me that Hillary was the first to climb Everest.

Lefty's Everest is this shelf above our closet. She's been trying to get up there for months. Last week, we started seeing evidence that she had finally made it. There are some Christmas lights up behind the lanterns, and we saw one of the lights sticking out over the edge.

I know that her original route started on the tall dresser. From there, if we had left the closet door open, she would jump to the closet door, and climb up the clothes that were hanging there until she got on top of the door. I never saw her get up on the ledge from the closet door, and I figured we were safe once we started making a more conscious effort about keeping the door closed.

Last night, though, she gave away her secret move. Now, she's jumping from the lower dresser (on the right, below) straight to the top of the door into the room. She gets her front paws on the top of the door, then pulls herself up. From there, she can get her paws on the ledge pretty easily, and just pulls herself up. (I think she practices pull-ups on the windows when we're not here... well, even when we are here ...)

Getting down is another matter. I should have realized this when I noticed that the photo on the wall there was slightly askew. I have no idea how she got herself down the first time, but there's a paw print on the top of the photo. Can't imagine it was too graceful. When we caught her last night, she started looking at us for help. She tried just putting her front paws on the wall, but realized that wasn't such a good idea. Greg went and got one of their beds that I held up over my head. (Even standing on a chair, she was about a foot higher than I could reach my arms.) Eventually, she got into the bed and we got her down. The cats were locked out of the bedroom for the night after that.

I let them back in this morning while I went to eat breakfast and Greg was still in bed. Lefty woke Greg up - she was standing on top of the door again and squeaking.

I think that the solution may be putting a stop on the door so it won't swing close enough to the wall for her to get back up there. If that doesn't work, we're going to invest in a parachute. There are still lots of technical details to work out on the parachute. It's got to be able to sense both height and speed, because otherwise she could be at a huge disadvantage in the competetive sport of hall racing.

Oh, and here's a picture of Dusty begging for attention as I tried to document Lefty's route.