terminal velocity of cats

/ the new and improved cat scratch centre of entertainment /

this weekend reuben and i finally decided to put the cats' scratching post back together because it seemed like they've been getting a bit bored lately. so we brought it over to reuben's dad's warehouse/workshop and set to work. actually, reuben's dad did a lot of the work, but seeing as he builds things for a living, we were pretty sure whatever he came up with would hold together a lot longer than what we built. we got about halfway finished and i took one of the posts home to cover in twine. it only took 3 hours to twist and glue (!!), but ended up looking great in the end. and as you can see in the picture, they've already been having a fantastic time playing on it. they're so spoiled.

/ aston deciding how he's going to get the leaves out of the bucket /

as it has gotten warmer, i've been collecting water from the shower as it warms up in the morning to water my plants. and this is when i found out that aston kinda likes water. i've had the blue bucket filled up several times and each time he dips his paws in to play with the ripples and catch floating things. i dropped a little piece of cat litter in at one point that sank to the bottom but that didn't deter him! he put both his arms in up to his armpits and played with the piece of litter. i think he would have put his face in too if he could have figured out the whole holding his breath thing. needless to say he got soaking wet but it was so entertaining to watch.

/ i'm gonna get you leaves! /

i read an article recently talking about how cats land more successfully from a fall from 7 stories or higher, and then i was listening to a radiolab podcast today about falling that had a short feature on an article called the terminal velocity of cats. basically it was talking about how after 9 stories, a falling cat has reached its maximum speed and actually spreads out flying squirrel style and then relaxes so that by the time it hits the ground, they often suffer little to no injuries. pretty amazing.

/ why am i suddenly wet?? /

luckily we've put up mesh around our balcony to create something like a catio so we don't have to worry about any falling cats (we're only on the third floor, so they could potentially get quite hurt). currently the most dangerous thing in our house is the laundry - this is aston after he ran straight through the laundry rack and came out on the other side with my underwear.


hilarious.