The humans’ first floor terrace was not supposed to be an extension of The Cat’s Garden, the drive, or the front path. It was not supposed to be somewhere that cats would find an extra bowl of food (although there was always water available). It was not supposed to be a playground, a nursery, a lookout point, or an easy access point for cats to break into the house. But somehow, just somehow, The Cat’s family managed to turn it into all of those things. They had trained the humans well and they knew the world was theirs for the taking.

The Terrace Takeover Part 1 – ‘There Is No Cat In This Photo’.

Ana playing hide-and-seek.
His arrival seemed to coincide with smells of cooking from the kitchen, even though he was never fed on the terrace – in fact, Ana thought he was never seen on the terrace. Please enjoy this photo of an invisible Ana.

The Terrace Takeover Part 2 – ‘Room For Nine More?’

How Sprocket and The Cat turned the terrace into a nursery for their combined family.
Out of the blue one morning, we discovered that there were seven kittens and two mothers living beneath a pile of olive branches on the terrace, under the lounge window. In this photo, Sprocket was carrying the kittens one by one from the garden (where they had spent the first fortnight of their lives) up to the terrace. The Cat was content to supervise the transfer of the kittens, four of which were hers, by her daughter. It was one of the perks of being the matriarch.

The Terrace Takeover Part 3 – ‘Here, Let Me Help You With That’.

The myriad of opportunities presented by laundry.
The cats were always a great help with the laundry as Greyfur demonstrated here. Tassles and laces were regularly shredded, underneath the clothes horse was turned into a shady retreat, and the washing line became a precarious high-wire practice zone.

The Terrace Takeover Part 4 – ‘The Wickedness Of Wicked Child’.

Whitefur (aka Wicked Child) had a mission.
Mission impossible – no. Mission improbable – maybe. Mission indoors – definitely. Whitefur had to scale a half-height fly-screen, then negotiate her way down and under a woven fly-curtain, and all in order to lie on the doormat, just a few inches from where she had started out. From there she would be bundled up by a human, admonished (if you can call it that), kissed, and carried back outside. Then the fun would start all over again.

The Terrace Takeover Part 5 – ‘Do Not Disturb. Covert operation In Progress’.

Don’t ask – it’s top secret.
From the terrace, there was an excellent view of the garden and some of the fields. There was enough space between the balustrades for those trained in surveillance (in this case The Cat’s daughter Flora and her own daughters Souci and Pippin) to observe the comings and goings. Souci had already found out exactly how much space there was when, at the age of exactly four months, she decided to practise her slalom technique (something that kittens are surely guaranteed to find useful later in life) weaving in and out of the balustrade and fell off, into the garden. Thankfully she survived, bodily intact but with her pride dented.

The Terrace Takeover Part 6 – ‘I Don’t Know What It Is, But It’s Important’.

Practice makes perfect, the Pippin way.
For a moment we thought Pippin might be harbouring a secret desire to learn the bassoon but no – she was just chewing the parasol base. A bassoon-playing kitten would admittedly have been a first, but on the other hand a double-reed instrument honking away on ‘A Tune A Day For Bassoon Book 1’ under the bedroom window each night might not have been the sweet lullaby the humans needed for a good night’s sleep.

Obviously the terrace was never the province of the humans, and we were fortunate that the cats allowed us to share their space.