October 13, 2021
Today William Shatner ‘Captain James Kirk’ was not the only one who went boldly where nobody has gone before… Stipke did the same thing and though it only happened on our landing, and not in Texas in a space rocket, to her it was like visiting a new world as well!
So what happened? Well… I was upstairs to work on this blog and these days I leave the door to the cat room open when I am doing that. The cat-cams will tell me when they come out and allow me to keep an eye on things and intervene when necessary. In the past week, it was usually Sipke, the male kitten, who was being courageous and ventured out, observing himself in the mirrored doors of the linen closet and sniffing around some.
But today, when I got up to see who was out of the room, to my huge surprise I found Stipke on top of one of the baby-door barriers that divide the landing into different sections! When she saw me, she jumped off. But that was just for show. When I turned my back, she was already back up. And this repeated itself multiple times. I watched it for a bit but when she got ready to jump off, onto the stairs, I interrupted her. I don’t want her to get into an unexpected confrontation with Suzi. They have already visually met and Suzi made it very clear that she did not appreciate the intrusion of her territory. Just by hissing and growling, but with cats you just never know what the next step is. And let’s not forget that Mitsy is right around the corner and she still is pretty protective of her kittens, understandably so… She also still has all of her teeth, she is healthy and strong and I think it could turn ugly with ‘Suzi the toothless’ as the weaker adversary.
What really struck me was that it was Stipke who went on this exploration… I expected it to be Mitsy, to be honest. In the weeks we have had her in the house, I have often seen that she observes a new situation, processes it and then, quite suddenly, seems to make a decision and acts. I could totally envision her jumping the fence after studying it carefully for a couple of days and walking down the stairs. In which case the kittens would follow, for sure. With an unpredictable outcome. Now that the feline fosters are on their last stretch in our house, it does not seem worth taking that risk.
Thanks to the cameras we have in and around the catroom, you can follow the process of exploration in this video below. It apparently made them even more couragous, because they discovered the round toy with the tinkling balls in it. I had introduced them to it before and then it scared them. But today they took it in their stride and played with it for a long time, so I moved it into the catroom, where the fun continued for a good bit. Mitsy does not like it, she is not a big fan of any toy that makes noise. But it kept the twins busy for a long time. After which everyone went for a long nap…
I say that Captain Kirk would be proud of them all!