Sandy, my sister who lives in Michigan, recently sent an email to tell me about her kitten Peaches.  It seems that when Peaches falls asleep on the windowsill, she literally falls, losing her balance and tumbling off.  Sandy's remedy was to put a little table with padding right below the sill for her young longhaired cat.  Now if Peaches drops off when she drops off, Sandy says, "At least it's a short drop."

   Well, while cats have their moments of public awkwardness, they're still known for being sure-footed and agile in high places.  Our cats, though, tend not to go to such extremes.  Kelly climbed trees before he adopted us, but he's no longer a skinny boy, so most of the time now he prefers to keep at least two paws on the ground at all times.  Lizzie is the heaviest and the most hesitant; even at small obstacles she stops and looks for long moments before she leaps.  And Nicky, the alpha cat, is master of all he surveys from the top of "his" cat tree, but that's as far off the ground as he wants to go.  You'll never find him, or any of our cats, on top of the refrigerator, for instance.

   Caitie-Belle is the only one of our cats with real climbing skills.  At our house, the ground in back slopes down, and the deck was built to allow for it.  At the lowest point, it's a good six feet from the ground to the top of the deck's railing.  The first time Caitie-Belle saw this, she looked up and took only an instant to make the necessary kitty calculations and decide that she could climb it.  Then our little calico crouched and leaped more than halfway up, digging her claws into the wood to keep from falling back.

   To make it the rest of the way, she needed to go both upward and slightly outward to get around the wide railing.  This proved to be no barrier to Caitie-Belle.  While holding on with her back claws, she stretched up and reached backward to find the railing with her front paws.  When she grabbed it, she quickly pulled herself up and climbed on top of it.  All this took much less time than it takes to describe it, and was an impressive display of feline athleticism.

   Now if Caitie-Belle could give Peaches some lessons on how to be graceful, particularly during sleep, Sandy wouldn't need to be concerned about whether her cat can get through a nap both in one spot and in one piece.  Still, as I wrote back to her, no matter how awkward her cat looks when it loses its balance, as long as Peaches lands on her feet, she is still a Good Cat.