Lofts

I'm not a fan of lofts. However, we had one in the old house we rented on Wright Street. They had renovated the house and made a loft bedroom that overlooked the kitchen. Since the kitchen was really one big open-concept room (all the rage now, but not my cup of tea) anyone trying to rest in the loft bedroom had a tough time of it if there was conversing going on below. And all the cooking smells went up there, too.

I sure do have a lot of relatives

Another bad thing about lofts--they aren't very animal friendly. One evening Lloyd was watching TV in the loft bedroom and fell asleep. The bedroom was designed with a railing overlooking the kitchen area below--sort of an indoor balcony effect--and there was a ceiling fan and light in the kitchen/entryway area, across from the loft. That particular evening, Lloyd woke up to see Tarquin walking back and forth on the railing--"Hey, look what I can do!" Then he (Tarquin, not Lloyd) spied the fan blades (thankfully not going at the time of this narrative) across from the railing. Tarquin started the head bobbing that cats do--I think it's how they do mathematical computations to determine how fast they need to launch themselves to reach their intended destination. Luckily Lloyd started sweet-talking the cat and got to Tarquin just as he was thinking about jumping onto one of the fan blades! Maybe he thought it was a kitty merry-go-round. 

As I've mentioned, Tarquin liked to sit by the back door and converse with the outside feral cats. They'd come up to the door and there would be much sniffing and cat conversing. One day Lloyd's brother was over and for some reason, we hadn't shut the back door tightly. In walked one of the feral cats. It suddenly realized the mistake it had just made, walking into the house. It panicked and somehow managed to climb the vertical blinds by the back door, perch on the valence over the door, and then leap up into the loft.

Swell. Now we had a panicked cat swirling around the bedroom. There was much thumping and clattering up there. Lloyd quickly went upstairs, armed with a fishing dipnet, and managed to herd the cat (yes, sometimes you can herd cats) toward the railing. Then it leaped back over to the valence and over onto a ledge by some windows on the south side of the kitchen. Said windows and ledge were probably a good 10 feet or more above ground level.Well, this isn't much of an improvement, is it?

We isolated Lucy, Brilly, and Tarquin in another room of the house and then propped open both the front and back doors. The humans were leaping about, wielding dipnets, and whooping and hollering at the poor frightened cat. It finally hurtled back over to the valence, leaped to the floor, and headed out the back door. All we saw was a fluffed-up black streak heading due West.

You'd think we would have learned our lesson about cats and lofts, right? Well, not exactly. Another time Lloyd again caught Tarquin doing his Flying Wallenda tightrope act on the loft railing. Cats are sure-footed, right? Not this time. Tarquin started to slip, and it looked like he was going over the edge. Lloyd grabbed his bathrobe and tossed it toward the struggling cat. Tarquin grabbed hold of the robe and Lloyd pulled him to safety. At that point the loft became off-limits to cats. It was a shame to have to do that, as Lucy and Brilly loved to snooze in the sun up there. But it was either close off the room or install barbed wire on the railing top.