Where have you been?

We have heard many stories about people living in flats where their cats decided to jump off balconies. The cat downstairs jumped off their 5th floor balcony twice, a woman at the place where I teach English's cat jumped off their 7th floor balcony, one of my girlfriend's friend's cat jumped and on and on. All of the cats lived (surprisingly) but had broken legs, internal injuries and the like. We decided to put up this sweet retaining net (shown above) so if Kobra decided to end it all he would have to negotiate it first.


After watching him try to climb it and scratch his claws on the bamboo supports we decided that he would be safe and allowed on the balcony unsupervised. Naturally he was thrilled as you can see from this picture.


During the spring a family of sparrow looking birds decided to build a nest on the roof of our balcony. Kobra was as excited to sit watching the nest as he was to look down on the people walking their dogs. Unfortunately they are quite dirty (see the shit in the picture?) so they are not welcome back next year if we still live here.


So, more recently, it has been a rough few days for Kobra because he has been really sick. He acts happy, purrs, meows, and all that, but walks around as if he was three sheets to the wind running into walls, falling over, etc. We took him to the Vet today and she said he had probably eaten a poisonous plant and was suffering from the toxins. After a few shots and a couple of pills he seems better but we need to take him back for a follow up visit.

We were bad pet owners and didn't check our plants before we got him but for everyone else considering a pet here is the list of toxic plants published by the ASPCA. We have the Dracaena which Kobra finds really tasty. Fortunately he also likes the chicken and rice we prepare for him. So much in fact that he often tries to eat it before its fully cooked!


And when there is no chicken on the stove he knows where we keep it (plastic container with the blue lid directly in his line of sight). He has tried several times to climb into the fridge just, you know, to get a closer look.