Mr. Inquisitive

We have never let the cats in the basement of our house. It's unfinished and kind of icky and there are a lot of places for a cat to hide that would be difficult to get them out of. Plus (and this is probably the biggest issue) Biscuit has a habit of chewing anything and everything that he is not supposed to and the idea of "Biscuit-proofing" the basement (basically a huge storage closet) is exhausting. So we just shut the door and keep them upstairs.

For the past several months, Biscuit has been kept in the front of the house and Kaesea in the back -- Biscuit is a fighter (he may be "playing," but Kaesea does not see it that way) so it's been easier on Kaesea to keep them separated. The back of the house is where the basement door is.

Last week, I was careless about closing the basement door all the way behind me and Kaesea made his way down the stairs. Bill and I talked it over and decided it might be a fun little "adventure" for him to have a supervised outing to the basement. Kaesea was all for it! He has always been a very curious cat and this is like a Whole. New. World.

We have let him down there three times now for about 10 minutes each time, just to sniff around and check things out. He is SO excited by this. When we think he's had enough, we scoop him up and take him upstairs. He disagrees with how much is "enough" and we have now created a bit of a monster: Kaesea is jonesing to explore the rest of the basement.

I tried to get a photo of him while he was actually pawing at the bottom of the door, but he got wise to me and quit before I could snap it. Here, however is a one of him simply staring at the door:

"I'm sure I can open this stupid door with the force of my will."

(Good luck with that, Kaesea.)

To me, this is just another sign of Kaesea's strong spirit -- kitties who are ready to check out are not interested in exploring Basement World. But our kitty is.

Oh, Kaesea has a question for you:
"Hey -- will you open this door for me? Huh, huh? C'mon... just a leeettle."