Houston, We Have a Kitty on the Ceiling

So this morning I woke up early, made some coffee and settled down in front of the stove to catch up on my newspapers, when out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement above and looked up to see this:

XingXing had jumped up from a piece of furniture next to the hearth and scaled those narrow ledges to the top! Uh-oh. I yelled back to Jo-jo to wake up and snapped this photo. Mother-in-law went to fetch a ladder and I positioned myself below XingXing to catch him if he fell trying to climb down. But next thing I knew he jumped from those narrow ledges up to the rafter and started scurrying around up there.

The rafters are in a "Tic-Tack-Toe Board" configuration and he explored them quite thoroughly. At first we were scared when he came to the end of a rafter that he wouldn't be able to turn himself around. Despite giving out a weak and somewhat pathetic "meowrrr" he was eventually able to turn around. A debate ensued on whether he would be able to get down unassisted. Although father-in-law started in the "if he can get up, he can get down" camp he eventually yielded after several more pathetic meows and our collective opinion that he did seem nervous and somewhat frightened.

B&W crop:

On this next photo you can see some cabinetry on the lower right that surrounds the fridge. I used the ladder to get up on top of this but I wasn't sure it would hold my weight so Jojo got up there with XingXing's favorite toy and lured him over and grabbed him.

Happy to report that the furry little guy doesn't seem psychologically traumatized from his adventure and in fact is sleeping soundly on my lap as I write this!