Pushing Stuff off Shelves

[Banjo]

There's an old Joke, How do we know that the Earth is not flat?
Because cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.

This is one of their less endearing behavioral traits, mine seem to do it to create space in higher areas to sleep.
I suppose it's something to do with being able to see enemies approaching.

Any ideas?

[Mollycat]

What a lovely topic for a lazy Sunday morning!

To be honest I've never had a shelf-pusher / gravity-tester but I did have one who was fascinated with anything slightly off the edge if she was under it. So from the floor anything sticking out over the edge of the table or a chair had to be attacked, including fingers.

[fjm]

Mine would push small objects around when they were young, especially pens and reading glasses which, once on the floor, inevitably got chewed by the dogs who were then still pups. Less so these days - Pippin struggles to get up onto tables etc, and Tilly's energies are concentrated on hunting, although there still seems to be a strangely inexplicable absence of functioning pens in my house..

My childhood Siamese would sneak into the pantry after the remains of the Sunday joint and knock bits down to the dog waiting below - unusually altruistic, we always thought!

[Ruth B]

My golden oldie, Tiggy, in her younger days would not let a pencil eraser stay on the table over night, it would then get chased around the dining room floor in preference to any proper cat toys that might be about. As for gaming dice they were just asking to be knocked off the table by any cat that found them, the 12 and 20 sided dice were particularly fun as they rattled and rolled well on the laminate flooring.

My Mother though had the worst I have known, he was fine with anything on most surfaces, but her bedside table had to be kept clear, alarm clocks, books, watches all got pushed off, but the best (worst) has to be when, instead of pushing her stud earrings off. he picked one up in his mouth and jumped down and put it on the floor then went back to get the other one. My Mother was terrified he could have swallowed one, and even with the back in place there was still a good chance the post could have injured him. Losing a pair of gold earrings was the least of her concern.