When Apricot first started playing with the cat trees, and climbing up them, he wasn't particularly clever about the pathway he took, and would often go up the hard way instead of the stair-step way the designers of the cat tree intended. He still does this, by the way.
Anyway, he fell off, right in front of me. I didn't react in a mocking or laughing way (I was too worried, plus I know better than to laugh at a cat doing something clumsy) and after a short hesitation, he bounced right back up into the tree. I have mentioned this incident before, I believe.
Here's what happened though. It appears that since he did not have other cats to tell him he was being undignified, and I showed no signs of thinking it was undignified, he has concluded that, as falling on the carpet is soft and padded and doesn't hurt, falling is not something to be avoided.
I have the world's clumsiest cat, I swear. He falls off the cat trees all the time. He never even tries to flip around and land on his feet. Whatever is closest to the floor when he lets loose, that's what hits the floor. It's getting so bad that I have to be careful when I come home and pet him, because occasionally he'll act like he has a tender spot. As in, he landed on it rather harder than he thought he was going to.
He chases the bird up onto the guest bed and off again, and sometimes when he grabs the feathers at the edge of the bed, momentum carries him onto the floor, and he just goes with the fall, clunk onto the floor. It's a good thing I have rugs on top of carpets!
When he wants to be on the washstand beside my bed, instead of jumping onto it, he tries to pull himself up because it worked once before. And it never works and he ends up slipping off and falling on his back on the carpet. (It worked the first time because he jumped and missed, and caught himself, so he was already several inches off the carpet when he hauled himself up by his arms. It doesn't work when he doesn't jump up first and tries to do it just standing on his back legs. Sometimes I have taken pity and lifted him up, but most of the time he seems to want to "do it myself" so I back off and let him.)
None of these falls faze him much. He usually just bounces up and keeps on going, like he's made of rubber.
One time he fell off the side of the guest bed in a rather unusual way. Let me see if I can describe it. He was parallel to the edge of the bed. Both front feet and back feet slipped off at the same time, but since the bed has a comforter on it, the fabric bunched up just a little as he slid and slowed him down, so he came down the side of the bed, still parallel to it, until he hit the floor, all four feet at the same time. And then momentum caught up with him and knocked him over flat.
He did not like that fall and refused to play with the Bird for several minutes after that, apparently blaming it for his fall. He played with it again once the Bird realized the fun was over in this room and went out into the hallway.
But usually, he falls, picks himself up, and off he goes again, undaunted.
He'll leap after the Bird when he gets good and caught up in the chase, and do complete somersaults when he catches it. I've seen him perform double twists in the air suitable for a gymnast and catch the Bird midair, and then he never sticks the landing.
All of this is very active and my camera is no good at catching it. I'd have to set up a video camera on a tripod, aim it down the hallway (which is where the most active acrobatics with the Bird occur), and hope to get something good without destroying the camera as he races up and down the hallway after the Bird. (Considering how often the Bird slams into the walls when I'm trying to get it away from yet another successful catch, I think I'd probably be the one to do the camera destroying.)
But today he was stalking the Bird on the living room crepe myrtle cat tree, and I was taking pictures since he was slow in getting started with Bird chasing today. And I managed to catch a blurry picture of him falling backward off the tree, Bird successfully in his mouth.
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| The Bird is all that matters!! |
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