Kitty Takes a Ride

Surely you remember our kitten Tonks.

Now she's 10 months old.  And a pill.  

Recently she decided to be bored with the plethora of play-things we provide for her and instead engage in complicated acrobatics.  For the last few days, she has been carefully plotting an elaborate stunt.

She sat at the top for days, pondering whether the feat was possible.  I passed her at the top many times, sitting on the edge, deep in thought......making calculations.  I was quite sure she wouldn't go through with it. It's a pretty steep bannister.

This morning, as I poured my cereal, she decided to go through with her stunt.  She must have gotten a rush of courage.  She had visions of greatness, a feeling of invincibility.  She was on top of the world and she could do anything.  So she went for it.

About the time I finished pouring the milk over my special K, the house erupted into a chaotic chorus of unidentifiable sounds.  It all happened at once, making it impossible for me to deduce what it was or where it came from.   I heard scuffling, scraping, scratching, crashing, a boom, shattering, glass breaking, and I saw a black blur shooting across the living room at breakneck speed, narrowly missing every piece of furniture in the room.  My first thought was that the cat had become entangled in something and was now dragging it about the house, breaking things with it.  I dashed across the room to locate the disaster I'd just heard.  I found it in the entryway.

Evel Knievel had jumped to the bannister to make her slide to the bottom.  Unfortunately, she is only a cat with a pea sized brain, incapable of logic or deduction.  In her planning, she did not account for lack of traction or rate of speed.  She made the jump, began to slide, panicked, and flailed around for a few fractions of a second until she fell off the sharp drop directly onto our large terra cotta decorative vase.  She must have picked up terrific speed very quickly.  I still cannot seem to compute how so much damage could have occurred.

Once I had figured out what happened, I decided to make sure she wasn't hurt before I killed her.  I found her hiding beneath the table, tail puffed up to the size of a feather boa.

Since the incident, she has been slinking about the house looking embarrassed.  Every once in a while she comes out from behind the curtains or under the chair to peek around the corner into the entryway, now terrified of that general area.

I was totally just thinking yesterday how I wanted to go out shopping for a new $200 vase.  And I needed to clean behind it anyways.  So no harm done.