karen@randvax.UUCP (Karen Isaacson) (09/09/85)
Just another cats + balcony anecdote. When our cats were young (less than one year old) we lived in an apartment with a balcony. The balcony was their idea of heaven. If we didn't let them out there, they would remove the screens (and once even a window - sort of a louvered pane of glass that could be slid out of its frame) to be out there. One of them wasn't much of a problem. He'd sit on the (wide) ledge and watch the world, glare at the birds, and then descend to the balcony to kill a threatening leaf. But the other... Orville has fantasies that he can fly. Or maybe they aren't fantasies. He would sit on the ledge for ten minutes studying the neighbor's ledge. You could see him thinking. And then suddenly, zoom, no cat. Our neighbors were amused the first time he stopped by (they kept the door to their balcony open for ventilation) and plopped down with them to watch TV, but the charm wore off rapidly. We fenced the ledge facing their ledge, but he managed some ricochet shots off a tree. So we finally had to revoke his balcony privileges. Talk about mad! Later, we bought a house. The houses in our development were at least eight feet apart. But he would climb our stucco so that he could jump from roof to roof throughout the neighborhood. Can't imagine our neighbors were very thrilled, but at least no one complained... -- Karen Isaacson decvax!randvax!karen karen@rand-unix.arpa