Jupiter Kneivel...

Since Jupiter Jones, our precious, darling little kitten, came to live with us, he's figured his way into many things (fireplaces included) resulting in our having to construct a wide variety of barricades. The only one of those barricades that is still working is the one over the fireplace - there's duct tape involved there, so its failure was never a consideration. Duct tape has the magic.

Anyway, all the other barricades have failed, and miserably. If Jupiter can't get over it, he will move it, if he can't reach it, he will climb. If he can't climb, he will perform a series of leaps and climbs, going from one piece of furniture to the next until the desired spot is, hooray, accessed. He can zip through doors that have only been open for a split second, and will scoot to the most inaccessible place possible (for humans) once he's into the room he is absolutely, positively not to be in. Ever.

We went through a few incarnations of box barricades at the base of the stairs. As you might have guessed, he finally got over those. So Didgeridoo Boy had the idea to move them to the top of the stairs - on the very top, they would present a higher barricade, he reasoned, but realized it was a temporary fix. This worked for a couple of weeks, but then Jupiter figured out how to get between them. So the kitten could get upstairs - not such a bad thing, as he usually waited to go up there until one of us happened up that way, and would follow us back down without any kind of fuss.

Last night, he decided to go up there and stay. Didge decided this did not need to happen, and got him. He went back up. Didge went to get him. He scampered up and ran lively circles in the hall, Didge chased him down and brought his happy kitty butt right back down to the living room. And again. And repeat, and again. So Didge came up with a new barricade solution - he repositioned the boxes, and opened the top flaps of one. I was impressed. We stood at the bottom of the stairs to watch the kitten's reaction.

Young Jupiter was positively outraged. He ran to the top of the stairs, sat, and looked down at us in a way that clearly indicated he would like us to do something horribly vulgar to ourselves on the way to someplace rather hot. He sniffed at the boxes, went down a couple of steps, and sat again. Finally, he came back down; Didge picked him up and carried him to the living room, and I went to bed.

A short while later, I heard a box tumble down the stairs and Didge running down the hall to see what had happened. I went out of the bedroom to find Didge at the bottom of the stairs, giggling, as a very bewildered orange and white kitten came creeping out of the box. He had evidently tried to jump on top of the one that had its flaps up, wound up going down into it, and then took the ride of his life to the bottom of the stairs.

It's really all downhill from here, isn't it? Don't answer that. Just let me blissfully labor under the delusion that the kitten has finally learned his lesson and will wreak no more havoc.