The United States created the Missouri Compromise to try to separate slave states from free ones. France built the Maginot Line to protect itself from Germany. The Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone was established in 1954 to divide North Vietnam from the South. But none of those lines of demarcation were as successful as the Kitten-Cooper-Kitchen line in our home.
Phoebe our kitten is a diminutive thing. She is almost 13 years old, but still far more petite than any of the myriad of cats we have previously owned. She loves to shadow Barb, sleep in the sun, and do her roly-poly twists on our bed each night.
Phoebe even liked our previous puppy, Milo, a rat-terrier mix. She enjoyed grooming him and seemed saddened when he left us. But then came Cooper.
Cooper has energy. Now that he is almost three, we had hopes that he would mature and outgrow his puppy exuberance. But as we watch him bound through the backyard, maturity does not seem to be in his, or our, near future.
Cooper intimidates Phoebe. He will wrap his body around the kitten, unfazed by her yelps of terror as she flees in panic. To keep the contacts to a minimum, during waking hours Cooper is restricted to two rooms in the house. He joins Barb and me as we spend most evenings behind closed doors in the home office. Most other times he is confined to the kitchen.
With our open floor plan, the kitchen is wide open to much of the house, but a portable invisible fence* keeps Cooper in the kitchen area. We mark the Kitten-Cooper-Kitchen demarcation line with small flags. When Cooper sees the flags, he knows that he is not to cross over that line.
And Phoebe knows it too. She will spread on the floor just beyond the line, keeping her eye on us, but just outside of Cooper’s reach. When we send Cooper out to do his business, Phoebe will tentatively enter the kitchen, knowing that she can always make a quick retreat back to her side of the line when Cooper reappears. She need not fret, knowing that she is safe.
The Missouri Compromise didn’t avert the Civil War. The Maginot line didn’t succeed in keeping Germany from over-running France. The DMZ didn’t prevent the horrific Vietnam conflict. But sometimes a line can do the trick!
*Cooper respects the invisible fence even though it is never actually turned on and he is at no risk of electric shock
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