Yes, more day shifting.  I completely forgot about getting a sunset shot last night, and I hear it was a beauty, too.  Today is brought to you by the color orange.

In case you don’t recognize it, that’s an end cap for a pipe.  Hubby likes to keep it where he can find it when he needs it next (on the shelf by the back door).  Lady, the Rescue Puma, thinks we hide it there for her to find it and play with it.  (Note the several punctures and scratch marks, which were not native to the device.)  In fact, anything we hide or put away, Lady seems to think we’re hiding it for her amusement, because we get a lot of, “Hey!  Look!  I found it!  Here it is!”

For a long time, the shelf above the microwave was a safe place to put pens, tweezers, or hubby’s rings that he doesn’t wear while he’s working (something about wanting to keep all his fingers, what’s up with that?).  No longer.  Tarzan (and probably Lady) is regularly pulling items down from there and playing with them.  Worse, Natasha is getting bolder about getting onto flat surfaces we don’t allow her to get on when we’re right there.  Until recently, the Siamese at least played the game that they didn’t do such things (at least, not when we were around to witness it).  The kittens have been a bad influence upon them.

Hubby always said he preferred Siamese because they were smarter than other cats, but we’ve had these kittens since birth, and they seem smart enough (but perhaps a bit independent — I think they got that from hubby).  I tell hubby it’s all his fault for making them a maze when they were small.  That has piqued their intellectual curiosity, and we are not keeping them challenged enough.

I wonder if How To Teach Physics to Your Dog will work with cats?  Do you think if I leave it open on the bed upstairs that they will read it?  Or should I hide it from them to make them think I don’t want them to find it?  Perhaps, a cat who can do physics could earn its keep?  Or at least pay for the 14 lb bag of food they consume every couple of weeks. (Yes, these are the big bags of Purina One urinary tract special diet cat chow at Wal-Mart — if you have four cats, that’s just enough to keep them happy for a short while.)