This time around, we don't live in a ground-floor apartment, but we do have lovely balconies on both sides of the apartment. They are all at least 3 stories high, so we are pretty sure that Monkey wouldn't be stupid enough to jump up on the ledge. He has figured out how to exploit the one flaw of the balcony design - which allowed him to jump up on the one section of ledge that borders our neighbors balcony (that is definitely at least 2-3 cats wide). They have a large palm tree that Monkey was very interested in checking out. (He loves plants and drinking water from unlikely sources (i.e. the base at the bottom of the plant.) One morning after searching for about 30 minutes, we noticed that Monkey was on our neighbor's deck and got him back from them. (They seemed amused by the whole situation and didn't realize that we had been worried!)
So, in order to keep him from jumping in this corner, we, too, have put a large plant in that corner. We started with a hanging mum - but Monkey had still been creeping into the corner and giving the balcony edge daring looks.
This meant in order to have our windows open (letting air in), I would have to keep my eye on him constantly. (Well, I feel this way...Bill says I should just let him do what he will and that if he can figure out how to get over, he'll figure out how to get back.)
Today, we bought a larger, wider plant. Now, unless he wants to get entangled in the plant, he won't be able to jump into the abutting section of balcony ledge. (Our plant below is the shorter of the 2 - with a pink flower at the very top.)
Needless to say, the cat has made life in Switzerland exciting once again!
