Above: Murphy and Denali check out the door. Again.One problem with this project, and it's a problem we do run into with home improvement projects, is that the cats need to stay out of it. Now, we've tried blocking off the downstairs. Access to the downstairs is tough to block off, though. Being a split level house, the living room is bordered by a wrought iron railing surrounding the foyer. We've wrapped the whole thing in giant pieces of cardboard but they still wriggle underneath and jump the six feet down or, even scarier, jump over onto the stairs. The lower floor is currently pretty dusty and dirty, so we wanted to keep them out of it. We set them up in our bedroom and attached bathroom with their water fountain, a litter box, and their food bowls.
That was Saturday. They're pretty annoyed at this point (Monday evening), to say the least. They haven't stepped foot outside the bedroom since Saturday morning. It's now to the point where Murphy, the more (what's a nice way to put it?) outgoing cat, the one who thinks he's a dog, has started teaching nice, quiet, sweet Denali all his tricks. She's now taken to jumping onto the stuff-covered dresser at 4:00 in the morning, mewling, or walking across my nightstand and knocking things over, sticking her rear in my face. It was tough enough with one doing it every night, now she's doing it too.
We're about to the point of being done with demolition, though, so we might be able to clean up down there and let them out soon – provided we're not waiting on water shield drying or some such business. In the past we've locked them up for painting, but paint's dry in a few hours so it's not so bad.
Long story short, I'm expecting to be eaten in my sleep some time soon. If you don't hear from me within a couple of days, call the MSPCH.
2 comments:
Cats are awesome! One thing that's worked with us -- and this may just be specific to just our cats, I don't know, but there's probably some kind of scientific basis to it -- is aluminum foil. Try lining the floor around the stairs with about 3-4 feet of semi-crunched-up aluminum foil. Cats -- well, our cats anyway -- seem to hate the way it feels under their feet. If you make a wide enough "moat" with it they may be discouraged enough not to try leaping over it. Worst case scenario is you're out $5 for a roll of foil. Great blog, by the way. I'm really enjoying it.
We've tried the foil thing on the backs of doors to rooms in which they're locked but that didn't seem to take. The moat idea may not be a bad idea, though -- next time we need to keep them upstairs I may give it a shot.
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