Just when I thought things calmed down, Casey and Smokey are getting into trouble again.

Back in March, they knocked over my Dale Tiffany floor lamp on night while I was asleep. I still haven't figured out how they did that without my hearing it fall over.

The following weekend, Smokey decided to start shredding toilet paper, forcing me to have to hide it from them.

In October, they decided they didn't like on of my Dr. Phil books and destroyed the dust jacket.

Sometime after that, they attacked a second book.

After the second book attack, I found some new bookcases to put in.



Originally, I had two of the black 3-shelf cases like the one still next to the two new cases. With the new bookcases in, I figured that things were solved since they could reach the bottom shelves standing on their back feet, but they wouldn't be able to pull things off like before.

Last week, after a month of not putting cayenne pepper in my upstairs bathroom sink, Smokey decided to start ripping out the drain stopper (the one that used to attach to the little pull lever on the faucet) and hiding it from me. He also began knocking things off my sink, which he hasn't done in a long time. Casey also surprised me by jumping up into the bottom left shelf in the above picture. I yelled NO at him and got up off the couch, and he jumped down.

Tonight I came home and saw that they had pulled off two books off the bottom left shelf. Other books were knocked over but still on the shelf. The two on the floor had some of the edges of their covered chewed on.

I did some yelling, and the two of them kept their distance. I got out the cayenne pepper and put some on the shelves in front of the books. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm running out of places and ways to get things out of their reach. The only thing I can think of is to cut out a cardboard panel to put over the front of the books on the shelves so they can't get to them.

I'm just so tired with the stress of work and trying to start my new career/business and am tired of constantly wondering/worrying that they're getting into trouble when I'm not around. I try to make sure they have plenty of toys to keep them occupied, which they play with all the time, but it's like I'm not around and they get bored.