Hammocks

Jan 4, 2011

Lets talk about hammocks.  I have a large window at the back of the gallery (you can see the bird watchers looking out of the window in the Dec 9 entry).  I thought it would be really nice for plants.  I put up two shelves across the window, painted them so they would not rot from wet pots and stood back and admired my carpentry work.  They it hit me!  What was I thinking - shelves -window - plants- cats?  Why didn't I just throw the plants on the floor and dig out all of the dirt in the pots and save myself a lot of time? It was not five minutes later that Squad Car was camped out on the top shelf and Roo had made herself comfortable on the bottom shelf, both of them happy and content in the morning sun.  So much for my mini-greenhouse.

The cats were perfectly content with the arrangements as they were but were forced to lean against the window so they would not fall off as they dozed off.  There is about an inch of space between the glass and the shelf and as they relaxed, legs, paws, and tails would slowly droop down to the next shelf and for the cat on that shelf, it was just too tempting of a target to ignore.  The first fight started about ten minutes later.  Roo could not resist the tail flicking about in front of her face and swiped at it with her paw.  Of course, the Car took offense to having her tail dissed and started swatting at Roo from the shelf above and proceeded to fall off the shelf.  These problems had to be fixed.

Sooo, what I did was take a curtain I had stashed away and created little hammocks for the shelf dwellers to recreate and relax in. I hooked the curtain on a sturdy curtain rod at the top of the window, and then draped the curtain under the first shelf on the side toward the gallery, stapled it and did the same thing under the bottom shelf.  I left enough slack in the curtain so it formed a pocket just the size of an average cat's body.  It took a couple of days for them to realize what the slack part of the curtain was for.  Roo figured it out first by falling off the shelf into the slack area of the curtain.  A perfect fit and it did not take long for Squad Car to figure out why Roo was so happy in her new hammock. By the end of the day, they were both in the hammocks and loving it.  Another benefit of the hammocks is they both love to be scratched through the curtain as they are taking their leisure. Here is a picture of Squad Car in her hammock.