Smokey's Cat Climbing Wall

Maybe it is his young age, but Smokey goes where Buddy never even thought of going. He loves to climb, whether it is a ladder, a screen, or jumping from one high place to a higher place. His climbing isn't really the problem though, it is his agility. He's clumsy and he knocks things off the shelves, the very high shelves, when he jumps around.

One night, I heard a loud crash followed by several more crashes. I rushed out to the garage to see if he had been crushed under what sounded like all the shelves in the garage falling off the wall. Smokey was on top of our RV and all around the end of the RV were broken bits of 18 gallon plastic totes and their contents, paint cans (of which only 1 quart broke open), and the screens to all the windows in our barndominium (most of which were bent). This climbing, jumping, and knocking stuff off shelves has got to stop. The ladder hasn't been kept near the shelves since the first time he climbed it, so we thought he might be climbing the ladder on the back of the RV, going out onto the slide and jumping onto the shelves a few feet away. I covered the ladder with cardboard to stop that climbing. Then, we noticed he was jumping onto the chest freezer, then onto the upright freezer, and onto the top of the garage door, where he tightrope walked across to the shelves.

Last week, we (we as in I was in the room too) built a safe climbing wall for him so he wouldn't be tempted to get into those shelves. So far, so good, but it is still new to him.

He thinks we can't see him.

Can you see his toy collection in there?

The idea for the box he is sitting in came from Smokey himself. We ordered a fireplace insert and it was held in the box between two styrofoam pieces. Smokey claimed one the minute it came out of the box. When it broke, he moved over to the other one, and for weeks, this was his favorite place.

When he finally broke this styrofoam piece, he had a really hard time trying to lay in it, so I built a box and glued the pieces back together inside it.

Loud purrs to all.