We have a two story house. The banister along the stairs is a railing with a solid wall below it, and it continues for a few feet at the upper landing. Because it's a solid wall, there's no way for a cat to see that there's a large drop off on the other side. From his perspective, it's just a half-height wall with a railing on the top. The railing is narrow and somewhat slippery (smooth wood, painted). Due to the layout of our house, it's basically impossible to isolate that area and keep him from getting near it.
We're concerned that our new kitten will try to jump up there and fall over the other side. We're closely supervising him when he's loose in the house (when we're not able to watch him, he has a large bedroom and bathroom to himself). But we're still worried about this, and at some point in his life, we're going to have to stop following his every step. So we would like to come up with something to prevent or at least discourage him from even trying to jump up on the railing. Any ideas?
I thought about putting something up there to make it less attractive, but I worry that it may actually make it more intriguing to him, and possibly even harder to keep his grip if he did decide to jump up and investigate. One Idea I've had is taping a piece of poster board or cardboard sticking straight out, to keep him from being able to jump up at the wall. But it would need to be long enough to prevent even a long jump, floppy enough to keep him from just jumping up onto the cardboard and solid enough to not allow clawing his way up. It also would need to not stick out so far as to completely block our access to the stairway (we're ok with something a bit ugly and inconvenient to protect our kitty, but we do need to be able to get through).
Maybe we're just worrying too much, but I'd love any ideas anyone has on this.
We're concerned that our new kitten will try to jump up there and fall over the other side. We're closely supervising him when he's loose in the house (when we're not able to watch him, he has a large bedroom and bathroom to himself). But we're still worried about this, and at some point in his life, we're going to have to stop following his every step. So we would like to come up with something to prevent or at least discourage him from even trying to jump up on the railing. Any ideas?
I thought about putting something up there to make it less attractive, but I worry that it may actually make it more intriguing to him, and possibly even harder to keep his grip if he did decide to jump up and investigate. One Idea I've had is taping a piece of poster board or cardboard sticking straight out, to keep him from being able to jump up at the wall. But it would need to be long enough to prevent even a long jump, floppy enough to keep him from just jumping up onto the cardboard and solid enough to not allow clawing his way up. It also would need to not stick out so far as to completely block our access to the stairway (we're ok with something a bit ugly and inconvenient to protect our kitty, but we do need to be able to get through).
Maybe we're just worrying too much, but I'd love any ideas anyone has on this.
