A Three-Cat Bunk Bed

After we found out that Kayci would be a girl, the task of getting the nursery ready kicked a little more into high gear. We had previously gotten a crib from one of Kristi's former coworkers in Dallas. I had painted the nursery while Kristi was out of town a few weeks before. Now, of course, it was time to begin thinking about all the other furniture and crap we would throw in there. 

My dad had told us that he wanted to "sponsor" the changing table. So while Kristi and I were out shopping one day we found a changing table that she liked and matched the crib really well. So we got it. Dad and my brother Adam came over around lunch time to see the ultrasound video and to have lunch. Afterward, we decided to put the changing table together. We made short work of it.

I should back up at this point and point out that the "nursery" is actually a sunroom attached to the master bedroom. There's no door (yet), just a wide opening and a room that, at some time during our home's 82-year history, was outside and probably a screen room. In that room we used to have a little antique bed (the "little green bed"), Kristi's granmother's antique dresser, a rocker and an Elliptix- a piece of excercise equipment that Kristi HAD to have to improve her life back at the end of college but had actually only been used a handful of times for anything other than a clothes hanger. The room was our cats' domain. They spent most of their days in there either sleeping on the little green bed or peering out the window at the world.

So it came as quite a shock to them when I took the bed apart and put it in the attic, moved the rocker and dresser out and we gave away the elliptix. They still hung around the empty room all day, leaving wads of cat hair everywhere. They figured that we had cleared out the room for them, of course, as a playroom. Then the crib showed up. They thought, "hey! We got a new bed!" and took turns jumping in and out of it until we put the railing up.

So then this changing table appears. The changing table consists of an upper area, padded for chaging the baby, and two lower shelves for storing diapers and wipes and other stuff I'm deathly afraid of. So there are three flat surfaces. We have three cats. Coincidence? The cats didn't think so.

It wasn't long before the cats descended and began inspecting this new thing in their room. Big Kitty and Buddy were the most bold and jumped up to the top immediately. Then Lucy got in on the act and settled into the lower shelf. This alternated periodically and at various times each of them got to be on the "top bunk." Sometimes two of them would curl up together on top and bask in the sun. Three cats never had it so good.

Then one day Buddy got in a bad mood over something and went on a tear. He first ripped into a garbage bag that was full of paper. He chewed up some paper that Kristi had to take to work and ripped a hole in the padding of the changing table. We know it was Buddy because (1) he's the only one with claws and (2) I caught him on the changing table. As soon as he saw me, he apparently knew he had done something wrong and took off like a shot. I didin't see him for awhile.

So now there's a hole in the padding and the cats are no longer allowed on the changing table at all. It took a couple of days- and Big Kitty didn't seem to understand at all- but they've been pretty good about staying down.