My husband snapped this picture of the cats and emailed it to me with the subject “Resting up after a night of badness.” For some reason the cats were very active the other night, and managed to open numerous drawers, cabinets, and doors; play with their toys loudly; and vomit on the floor… and here they are snoozing away in the AM as if nothing ever happened. Of course, they look totally innocent in this picture, don’t they?
Although I don’t live in California (sometimes I sure wish I did!), this is a great roundup, complete with a handy chart, of bookstore cats in Northern California.
As the article says, “A bookstore cat is a shop’s mascot and keeper, equally adept at charming customers and, when the lights go out, chasing away rodents. And so let us celebrate these furry souls – hopefully not an endangered species! – as more and more readers get their books delivered in shrink-wrapped packages from out-of-state corporate behemoths, or transmitted, in blips, to hand-held devices no cat would ever want to cuddle up to.”
We recently began packing up some boxes in anticipation of moving to a new apartment soon – and as you can see from this photo, Charley is very excited that we’ve made him a pile of boxes to scale (the last time we moved, he managed to find a path, via boxes, to the top of a very high bookshelf where he happily perched all the time). He loves to be as high up as possible. He’s taken to napping on that box and generally perching and hanging out there. I would really love to have some kind of cat ladder for Charley-cat in our new place, but it would have to be relatively unobtrusive; also, since Charley is on the large side and his brother is enormous (although not as much of a climber and not as likely to actually use the cat ladder), I’m concerned about durability. Also, I don’t want to spend a fortune. Does anyone have any recommendations or suggestions for building or buying some kind of cat ladder? I seem to recall seeing somewhere a few years back instructions for making cat wall perches out of cardboard but I can’t quite recall where I saw it (Readymade or Make magazine, maybe? Could be a great way to recycle all those cardboard boxes after moving!)*
My husband, by the way, says of my obsession with feline furniture: “On the amused-frightened continuum, I am beginning to tip toward the latter.” He doesn’t really mean it, though… I think.**
*Update: The article I was thinking of was from Craft magazine, and I found an archive online. However, now I remember why I never attempted this – it requires a lot of tools that I don’t have.
**Update #2: the husband swears he was not referring towards being frightened of my love for feline furniture, but rather in reaction to some of the items found on this website full of ideas on how to turn IKEA furniture into cat furniture.
I recently came across these hoodies for cats and my first thought was, Awww, how cute! Immediately followed by, there is no way my cats would EVER wear one of those. I’ve also seen cat neckties for sale on Etsy and other places, and while I love the idea of putting a necktie on my cat for some odd reason, in reality I’d never do it. My cats don’t like to wear anything – not even collars (they are strictly indoor cats and there is no way they could get outside without going through a hallway, an elevator or several doors and several flights of stairs, a lobby, and two doors before getting outside), but back when they were younguns and I tried to put collars on them, they would get out of every single one like little feline Houdinis.
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I loved the article in today’s NY Times about “catios” – enclosed areas for cats to safely hang out “outside” without all the dangers of really being outside.
I have long been obsessed with all kinds of cat furniture, including catwalks, cat trees, cat windowsill beds, and so on… but alas, my small New York City apartment doesn’t allow for much experimentation in the realm of cat architecture. If I could, though, I would totally have a “catio!”