Yesterday my son mowed the lawn and said he saw Moocher on the roof of a neighbor's sizable shed and wondered how the cat got up there.
I told my son Moocher can jump the same neighbor's chain link fence and for the shed he just needed one or two extra jumping places.
Today I studied the shed from my house. I noticed a barrel with a lid beside a downward extension of the shed's roof over an open area.
Just about then my son came into the kitchen. I told him I think I figured out how Moocher got on that roof.
"The barrel?" he said.
Yup.

Lions do that. But even me dino will take a nap on a full stomach.

A cat can do an "armadillo jump" too when startled and it's hilarious to watch. Maybe not as high, but straight up from all four paws.

If you are interested in learning more about cats and their care and feeding, try Think Like A Cat, by Pam Johnson-Bennett. It's a great book and has a really cute cover.

Yes, they sleep from 12-16 hours a day. Gotta conserve strength to catch the next meal!

Alabama has coyotes too. I just have not seen or heard coyotes at my address where I've lived for about a decade.
I've seen and heard them elsewhere in my county, though, since the 80s.
Armadillols apparently beat coyotes across the barrier of the Mississippi River. Saw my first one in Florida during the 70s.
That's when I learned one can jump five feet high when attacked by a dog. They sure don't wear turtle armor.

I read that cats sleep through 75% of their lives.
Moocher has been busy proving that to me.

Cats are obligate carnivores (they must eat meat but also require taurine which their body does not make) and are crepuscular; e.g. they hunt at twilight and dawn. Playtime here is just before breakfast and just before dinner. I feed my guys three times daily to spread meals out as one of them has a sensitive tummy.

Yes, foxes and coyotes are the bane of cats and other small predators.

Good luck!

If a flip phone will be good enough for Captain Kirk in 2266, it should be good enough for us now!

Since the phone I had conked out, I am just trying to
find a phone (either landline or cell) not made in a
totalitarian state. (The other I got from being in a medical experiment, and I was told it was Korean. But that was some years ago, and it has worn out).

I see a black cat as only having a nocturnal predatory edge when it has to fend for itself.
On the other hand, I have to be really careful not to step on Moocher in the dark.
Panthers (black leopards) are my favorite big cats.

My son once saw a fox in the front yard (I live at a dead end of an avenue almost surrounded by lots of woods) and then saw a most unhappy Moocher staring at the fox too.
Moocher disappeared for an entire week. I'm pretty certain it preferred the company of other cats at the crazy cat lady's house for a while.

You might be surprised how many black cats live out their lives in shelters. Some (stupid) people are superstitious and won't adopt a black cat. It's silly, I know; many of the black cats I've met were some of the most loving and affectionate cats around.

:-]

Cats know that they are small predators surrounded by big scary predators so they tend to be appropriately paranoid. If humans weren't such pushovers they'd stay away from us as well. Life is hard in the middle of the food chain.

Moocher is a fraidy too and still has some feral in it. It does not allow strangers anywhere near it.
Yestertady I was walking across the kitcen when I snagged a foot on the grab handle of a plastic bag with groceries still in it.
You should have seen how Moocher hunkered down all wide-eyed obviuoisly thinking some creature had attacked my foot.

Unfortunately it's true. We had a black cat named Sally for years. She did not like Halloween mainly because my husband and I were both employed in the only elementary school in town, and all the kids would come to the house to get their Snicker candy bars. Sally used to hide under the bed or some other place that would be far away from the door. I would have kept her inside on that night anyway...there are evil people out there. On that particular night, I was always happy that Sally was a fraidy cat. :)

Never heard of that about black cats or at least not in my area..
I have heard of sadistic cat-haters but their sick activites are not restricted to Halloweem.

There are cat pictures on Facebook???

Mine all like the Temptations as well. I love black cats, although I currently have a 14 year old silver Weegie, an 11 year old brown tabby, and a 6 year old Snowshoe (Siamese/shorthair mix). I love the name.

BTW, please keep Moocher safely indoors for the last several days of October. There are some truly evil people out there that deliberately mistreat black cats around the Halloween holiday.

For the first few months Moocher would not let me touch it. Then one day while I picked blueberries it kept flopping belly-up at my feet.
I was saying, "Who taught you that?" while I scratched its tummy without it even grabbing at my hand.
When I walked back to the house, Moocher kept running aahead and flopping, running ahead and flopping even when I began to ignore those antics.
The petting mystery cleared up when it turned cold. A lost kitten turned up at the back door.
When I pointed the kitten out to a neighbor, I was told the crazy cat lady up the street had another littler of kittens.
I took the kitten to the cat lady's house but no one was home. My son took a stab at it a few hours later and scored a success.
Cat lady took the kitten to a special room with a heater that her cats could get in and out of. My son saw Moocher there and told the lady, who said, "That figures" due to its prolonged absences.
So Moocher is a first rate Monsieur Moocher as well as a daddy. The kitten had more than likely followed Moocher to my home but Moocher was a tomcat too knuckle-headed to know what to do about it.
At least Moocher knows all about "getting it while you can."

Did you play this tune for Monsieur Moocher?
https://youtu.be/ju9yFA1S7K8

Far as I know, I have a run of the mill shorthair tomcat perfect for Halloween being entirely black with green eyes. It was a stray I fed a can of Starcist tuna to roughly two years ago. When it decided to stick around to mooch, I started to buy it cat food. Moocher really loves the Temptation brand treats, but I always start its day with regular cat food.

I buy Tracfone flip phones at Dollar General for $5 each, look for the box that says it doubles the minutes for the life of the phone - I buy 5 phones at a time. I have traveled all over the U.S. with them, they always work and have never been charged a "roaming" fee. If I lose it, break it, or it falls in a bucket of paint, just call Tracfone, transfer the number & minutes to the next phone and go about my business. A $20 card, available everywhere, gets me 120 minutes that never expire.