“I dare you, go on Lilah”, said a cat owner while her black-and-white cat climbed out onto the window sill of a first floor room overlooking the backyard and a trampoline in the middle of it. She giggled after she said it and as her cat prepares to jump.
Soon Lilah jumps and lands clumsily on the trampoline (see screenshot image above). In fact she only just makes the trampoline and bounds forward. She could have hit the springs which hold the trampoline onto the frame. The owner screams in hysterics as she is highly amused.
It seems bizarre to me that she finds it so hilarious. There was a distinct possibility that her cat could have been injured even killed in the worse case scenario.
I would suggest that it is an example of sloppy cat ownership at best and at worst plain negligent. The video is entitled: “Hilarious Cat Jumps Out Window Onto Trampoline”. Is it really hilarious? Am I out of step with the world? And is it a good idea that YouTube allows these sorts of videos to be uploaded and described as funny. It is not good for cat ownership standards.
I suppose you have to question the cat too! She made the jump and was reasonably confident in making it. Should we as cat owners allow a cat to do something which their cat does not realise is potentially dangerous? Or perhaps the cat knew that she could make it and there was no real danger?
It is one of those grey areas. Personally, there is no way I’d let my cat do this because cats can make mistakes. They are not infallible in their judgements on jumping. This is all to evident in many videos of cats jumping and failing to hit their target landing location. Cats are not infrequently injured when jumping down from a height.
