Critter Photo #22

Posted by: Allison on: December 5, 2016

• In: Teasers
• 2 Comments

With our household of critters having expanded to include three cats and a dog, I thought it fitting to join a meme related to pets. After searching around, I came across Awww….. Mondays. The one rule is: “Post a picture that makes you say Awww…. and that’s it.” Every photo seemed to feature a pet and so the meme is a perfect.

The longer you’re a pet owner, the greater the chances are that you’ll eventually have at least one pet that proves a challenge. For Andy and me, that pet is a little miss named Rainy. Even now as I write, she’s the one who’s tearing around the house, while her sisters and our toy poodle catch a few winks.

Just a mere month after coming into our lives on August 2015, Rainy turned out plant shelves into a “battleground”. Andy and I had been able to train her older sister to stay off the shelves by putting up tin cans. After several times of knocking down cans when she jumped onto the shelves, Cinder got the hint that the shelves were off limits. Not so Rainy!

No matter what obstacles we put up to protect our shelves, Rainy for the most part ignored them. Our bottom shelves hold Burma-Shave memorabilia and are now barred from access by cardboard. Score one for the humans! Our middle shelves hold souvenirs and plants. We tried protecting them with noisy cans and sticky tape. Just this past week, I finally tossed a previously much-liked plant. Rainy had successfully chewed off all the leaf tops. Score one for Rainy! As for the top shelves, I recently woke up to hear a glass topple from these shelves. Miraculously, the glass landed unbroken on the shelf immediately below. When I tossed the plants, I also rearranged the top shelves so that they didn’t hold anything that could break. Score two for Rainy!

But here’s the lesson I’ve learned from my mischievous imp. Cats are happier when they can follow their natural instinct to climb. With a little creative redesigning by me, Rainy can now explore the majority of our shelves to her heart’s content. Yet I’ve lost nothing by compromising with her. Our shelves still look pretty and still hold souvenirs, but they’ve also stopped being a  battleground.

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Tags: Allison's Book Bag, Awww.... Mondays Meme, cat photos, reviews of books for young people