More Kitties

Well, the ice has been broken with our old cat, October -- for the second morning in a row, he marched over to Buttercup's crate and stood there looking in, as if to say, "What are you up to?"  I let her out and they have been playing ever since.

 

Not a great picture, but it gives you the idea.  I got the scratching post yesterday, and Buttercup likes it a lot, especially sitting on top of the post.  She also loves the little toys, as does October.  My biggest complaint at this point is that she's hopping up on the dining room table at every opportunity, so I'm trying the "time out" method, which worked when my son was a toddler, but I don't know if it works with cats.

Not that my son got up on the dining room table, but when he was about a year old, he discovered that he could turn the volume on the TV waaay up.  Unfortunately, we laughed the first time he did it, giving him the impression that this was a good trick to entertain Mom and Dad.  Since this was in the days before remotes came with TVs, around the 10th time we had to get up and turn it down while  watching The Cosby Show, it wasn't quite as funny any more.  All the "no-no!"s in the world didn't seem to make any difference, so finally I just started scooping him up, every time he did it, and putting him in his crib, just for a minute or two, saying "time out!" in a cheerful voice.  It took about 24 hours of doing that, but finally he put his hand out to crank that knob and stopped, as if to say, "Ah, maybe not . . . " and the problem was solved.

Do you think it will work with an 8-week-old kitty?  Put her in the crate for two minutes?  She is quite the aerial artiste, somehow getting herself onto a high shelf in the bookcase, and then becoming quite perplexed about how she's going to get down . . .