Charley’s former favorite perch

Normally, in the menandcats.com household, there is human-feline harmony. The cats get along with each other. The humans get along with each other. The cats get along with the humans, and each cat has one self-appointed favorite human. But occasionally there are rifts.  You see, the only thing my husband has wanted for years was a flat-screen tv. Really, the hubs doesn’t ask for much. He doesn’t spend a lot of money – if anything, he’s a compulsive saver. We rarely get each other gifts, even. This year, there were lots of sales on flat-screen tvs, making some of them actually within our budget. So what was the problem? One black-and-white feline: Charley. Although Charley and the husband are BFFs, Charley’s favorite perch had long been our old, clunky, wide television. I mean, this thing had to be about nine inches wide – large enough to support Charley lounging, and he’s a big cat. When we told family and friends we got a new tv, they all said, “But where will Charley sit?”

I knew Charley would be upset about losing one of his favorite spots, but it’s not as if he doesn’t have others, not to mention a comfy cat bed. My husband kept asking, “Are you going to put the cat ahead of me forever?” I even made Charley a special window-sill pillow for him to sit on, to distract him from the tv change (this didn’t work).

Surely, we thought, Charley wouldn’t try to perch on top of the new tv, which is only an inch or two wide. He has two eyes and a brain and whiskers that can sense depth, right? We were wrong about this. Within 24 hours of the new tv arriving and being set up atop our old tv stand, Charley took a flying leap right onto it, and nearly toppled the whole thing. The husband, thinking fast, yelled  “Charley, noooooooooo!” while somehow managing to right the wobbly tv set and rescue Charley from disaster. He yelled so loud that Charley hid for about a day and a half. The husband spent the next three hours after the incident pacing and muttering, trying to rearrange the furniture, even debating if we’d have to return the new television. Finally, we decided the only reasonable solution was to try to Charley-proof the new tv with a cabinet (wall mounting wouldn’t really work in our living room due to its size and shape). Luckily we both had the next day off from work, and we were able to get to a furniture store, get an appropriate cabinet, get it delivered, and assemble it. Of course, we had to put a bunch of stuff on top of the cabinet to dissuade Charley from sitting on top of it. But with the new cabinet surrounding the tv, with doors that close and lock for extra Charley-proofing when we’re not around, it’s been so far, so good… we hope.

The new, hopefully Charley-proof cabinet with modern television