We are doing an extension on our house and two days ago it reached
lock-up (woo-hoo!).  To celebrate this we closed the external doors
and windows in the new bit, opened the internal window currently
connecting the old and new bits and let the cats have a bit of a
supervised explore.
Oh what fun!  Of course, I would never think to cast aspertions on the
courage of our cats, but one must approach these situations with a
good deal of caution, so there was a good deal of sniffing and
advancing with the belly held low.  All shadows of people (and d*g)
passing the outside were carefully monitored.  It probably won't
suprise any of you to learn that Spock, the boycat, was the boldest
and before too long he had traced the internal perimeter of the
extension and was looking up the wall frames with interest.
Persephone was looking for land-mines in the concrete, so was a bit
tardy compared to Spock.
I was interested that they both self-limited the amount of time they
spent exploring the new bit and after 15 minutes or so had hopped back
through the window into familiar territory.  They expressed their
satisfaction and then both sacked-out on the floor.  Exploring, as we
all know, is exhausting work!
It was really fun to see them exploring a new space in their own time
and to watch the two cats' different personalities coming through in
their approach to the issue.  We'll let them explore a bit more
tomorrow and I'll be interested to see if they'll be more bold than
they were today.

Tish