"Impossible!", you say! But I assure you, last night it all went to pieces. This precious cuddly beast, aka Pippin, is also a born "attempted-killer". I have an animal room in my apartment that houses all the geckos, my tortoise, and many of my fish. They have their own room so I can control the temperature, etc, but also because of the BEAST who lives in this house (and I'm not talking about myself when I have just woken up)!
I've been having to leave the door open for the past few months as the room heats up to dangerous levels without my careful monitoring - it has the sun on the main wall and window and the insulsation in this apartment is AWFUL. So in any case, my mom and I had to put our heads together to figure out a way to block the doorway from Pippin but yet still allow me to leave the door open for airflow. We ended up with a garmet rack covered in plastic. It's ugly, but it wedges in the doorway and he can't get around it or jump over it and it's been working wonderfully. HOWEVER....
Fuzzy, squishy, adorable Pippin finally (I'm convinced he's been mentally working this out for months) discovered a way to enter the gecko room. Naturally it was last night around 4:30 am when I was taking a friend to the airport for an early flight. Pip *always* meets me at the door when I get home so that was my first hint when he wasn't there... I dropped everything and went looking immediately. He was innocently sitting on the OTHER side of the barrier, "mew?" Nooooo sir. You get OUT! So I got him out, obviously, made sure everything looked ok... and then re-rigged the door and went into the kitchen for a few minutes. Come back, and where is he? BACK IN THERE! EVIL DEVIL CHILD!
And this time he was up on the gecko shelves, trying to get at them through the mesh - he jumped down and absolutely terrified two girls who live in a 20 long sitting on its end on the floor. Thankfully both were tailless or I'm sure I'd have had at least one drop. And naturally Pippin did not want to leave despite my yelling at him (usually works) and he had the advantage - I could not see - the gecko room was dark and I was not even taking the time to try and feel for the switch/fan pull. Finally got him out, but by then I was wondering how the heck was he magically teleporting through my amazing barrier!
Sooooo I went and mixed up some fresh wet food for him, and then went into the gecko room, set up the barrier, and called him to come to get his breakfast. He was hungry, and come he did. He's a freak of nature acrobat, I can hardly explain without showing a photo of the barrier, which I do not have. But I'll try - basically he was pushing up the plastic from the floor and going underneath, over the two bars at the bottom, and then under the plastic on the other side. *growl* I think I have re-rigged it so he can't do the same thing, but I've been putting a towel at the base while I'm gone just in case. Oh - edited to add - I JUST watched him trying to get back in the same way and he was unsucessful. Huzzah! I threw some foreign change (it's all I had handy at the time, ok?) at him after awhile since he wasn't giving up but he's given up for now at least and I feel more comfortable that the barrier has been reinforced succesfully.
*shakes head* You just never know with cats. Think they're sweet and then bam. Natural born killer... if he'd had the chance.
Oh and just fyi, to prove how impressive his acrobatic feats actually were, considering he had EXTREMELY scant inches to work with:
That's a 29 gallon tank, for reference. (LxWxH = about 30"x12"x18") Yes, he's huge. I own a lion, disguised in pretty boy clothes.
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