Shelf Improvement

There was much chaos last night.

I am amused.

Things had become entirely too harmonious in my house. Everyone quietly going about their business. No loud noises (aside from Ivan's snoring). No crashes. No bangs. Not even the whine-smack-whine-smack-whine of Tiger Lily going about her business.

"Peace on Earth" is simply not my cup of tea. I cannot abide it. It's not how I roll.

So as I lay in a sunbeam, pondering how I can possibly disrupt this cancer of tranquility that has somehow invaded my kingdom, I decided to get back to basics.

What are the fundamentals of causing disruption in my household?

1. Break stuff.
2. Break more stuff.
3. Make noise while breaking stuff.
4. Make the two leggers break stuff while they are trying to keep you from breaking stuff.

Breaking stuff is not necessarily about how MUCH stuff you break, it's more about WHAT stuff you break. It's kind of a quality versus quantity thingy. The best stuff to break is invariably the hardest to reach. The two leggers have an annoying tendency to put their most valued and fragile possessions in very high and difficult places to reach.

What the two leggers fail to realize though, is the fact that by placing these objects in such inaccessible locations, they draw attention to the value of the item. If they simply placed the item in question on the floor or near the edge of the counter, I probably would never bother it. However, they in their infinite wisdom, (extreme sarcasm for those not paying attention) place them in an area they consider "Kitty proof".

They believe they are thwarting me. They are in fact, throwing down a gauntlet thingy. In effect, they are saying "I dare you to destroy this".

My female two legger collects "knick-knocks". The most valuable of these, she makes the male place high up on a shelf in the hallway. This worries me not. Why? Because I happen to know that the male two legger built this shelf himself.

You see, everything that the male two legger builds succumbs to gravity sooner rather than later. If he'd been an engineer in Egypt, the pyramid thingies would have fallen in the first stiff wind.

Therefore, rather than attempting to reach the knock knacks, I simply had to wait for them to come to me. I am very patient. However, given that very little wind blows in my house, (Ivan in the litterbox being the exception) I quickly realized that gravity required some assistance in this case. I explained to Ivan that there was food on the shelf and that he had only to rattle the wall beneath the shelf to make it drop. Food, being Ivan's prime motivation in life, was all the impetus he needed to begin launching himself headfirst in to the wall repeatedly. As predicted, on the third impact the laws of gravity went into effect and the entire shelf came crashing down in a resounding CRASH!

The two leggers were out of their bedroom in a flash, water from the water squirty thingy flying around like drool from a bassett hound. Stepping on and further destroying their knocked knacks in the process.

As soon as I witnessed the shelf beginning to fail, I fled to another room. I waited until the majority of the screaming and squirting subsided before entering the room wearing my best "what did I miss?" look. The male bought my innocence completely. The female however, seems to suspect my participation.

She bears watching.