As the keener minds may be able to surmise, I have returned home from my most recent travels. After collapsing in a heap for an inadequate night’s sleep, today I had to go out and Do Stuff. Some of it was obvious… get mail, groceries, cat from neighbors, etc. Some less so. Take, for example, the requirement to visit Home Depot.
At the begining of the 2008/09 winter, I decided to be A Hell Of A Nice Guy for the cats living outside. To that end, I cut a cat-sized hole in the side of the big steel workshop. Inside, I built a large (about 4 foot cube) “room” out of drywall, and lined it with old blankets and such. The result was what I called either the “catlock” or the “cat house,” depending on which neurons were firing at the moment. Thus the outside cats could come into a portion of the shop during the worst of the winter, curl up in the dry and not freeze to death.
The catlock served perfectly well for over a year. However, imagine my joy upon finding out that apparently it wasn’t big enough… one or more of them *chewed* through the drywall, making a cat-sized hole, and creating complete access to the workshop for the whole clan.
Did they cause a ruckus in the shop? Yes, they did.
Did they find the large bag of dry catfood and eat *all* of it? Yes, they did.
Did they crap all over? YES, THEY DID.
Gah.
So, I’ve procured a large shelving unit (24 inches deep by 36 wide, 72 inches high) and some 2X4 sheets of half inch plywood. With this I’ll make another, hopefully sturdier, catlock using the bottom two levels of the unit. A hole will be cut in one shelf to allow for upward and downward travel, and the plywood will be bolted to the sides.
And at some point, I’ll have to bring in a back hoe and do cat crap cleanup.
8 Responses to “Ungrateful little bastards”
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ROFL! Look at it like this though, it has been unusually cold lately (global warming seems go have missed Utah) and maybe getting into the workshop helped keep them from freezing. My cat is one who will normally sit patiently by the birdbath out back in a snowstorm just in the off chance a bird might come by for a drink and there were days I opened the door, he looked out, and appeared to say “f—–k that” because of the cold.
No good deed ever went unpunished. 😀
Well, at least your heart was in the right place.
Give a cat cat food and you’ve fed it for a day.
Build a few bird feeders around the cat shelter and you’ve fed it for all winter.
This breakout(breakin?) was most likely instigated by just one cat, the others simply followed along!
You sure it was a cat that chewed through? Here, the groundhogs and the cats and even the raccoons share the resources. I have a groundhog that’s tried to eat through the floor of the garden shed, A raccoon that hides under the house. And cats that follow them around for the food they can find.
A time lapsed camera would be an interesting addition to see what goes on in the cat house.
Log on for 24 hr access to Utah’s notorious Cat House!!! only $29.95/mo. membership.
This post is useless without PHOTOGRAPHS.
“A cat is someone you can’t do enough for” — Garrison Keillor
david winfrey wrote:
“This post is useless without PHOTOGRAPHS.”
Cats being chased around the workshop with a shovel… entrance to cat shelter now being hooked via tunnel directly into furnace firebox… 😀
> This post is useless without PHOTOGRAPHS.
All there is to photograph is some ruined drywall and a whole lot of catcrap, neither of which makes for good photography. The replacement made from the shelving unit is underway, but it’s so friggen cold in the shop that I only work on it a few minutes at a time.