Kitty shelves and big balls

The cats have a new playground! They haven't yet figured out how to climb up to the top shelf, but they don't seem to have any trouble climbing down after being manually placed up there. The squarish thing at bottom right in the last pix is a corner of the sofa bed we moved below the top shelf as a safety precaution in case it rains cats and dogs.

Today we also took a turn to look after the nephews for the afternoon and evening. We took them to Slava's Snowshow, a bizarre anthology of non-narrative spectacles involving artistry in clowning, mime, lighting effects and big giant balls. Oh, and masses of materials such as "snow", simulated spider webbing and water blanketing the audience from time to time.

Yep, the audience is definitely a part of the show. Two words to describe the experience: play and imagination. It was such fun to gather handfuls of "snow" from the floor and dump them over your seat mate's head. It was a blast reaching up to grab an ever-expanding sheet of webbing and pass it along to the person behind just to see if there was enough of the stuff to cover the entire stall area. There was, and some...

By the time they rolled the big balls into the audience, we were already on our feet, anticipating our turn to take a swipe or bat at one of these colourful spheres as we tossed them around the auditorium. A great reminder of what pointless, unstructured play used to be for us [older] folk. XD

Took the kids to watch Paranorman in the evening. This animated movie was strong in the use of horror elements, yet managed to keep a light, humorous touch to quite a dark tale. Early in the movie, I wondered if some scenes might have been too intense for the young 'uns, but since I heard more laughter than screams (of which there were none from them... though there was an audible gasp at one point from the grown man sitting beside me) I kinda' figured I didn't have to drag everyone home prematurely. Turned out the plot addressed the issue of bullying and the irrationality of hysteria, so the psychological perspectives were interesting; and it ended on a sweet, if sad note. Go watch it! It's good!