Stopping the Draft

Yesterday the wind roared across the farm all day like a river in flood---a constant, turbulent force pouring over us, straight from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Branches fell from trees, fallen leaves rushed in swarms to the southern side of all the paddocks, anything left unattended outside tended to take flight and blow away.

Unfortunately, our cat door faces directly north, where the wind comes from. The house was freezing all day, with a terrible draft, until we noticed that the wind was blowing so hard that it was blowing the flap of the cat door open, and letting a stream of cold air blow directly up the house's long central hallway.

We closed it right away, to stop the draft, and the house warmed up again, somewhat. Unfortunately, it had been so many months since the cat door had been closed, our cats had apparently forgotten what litterboxes are for.

They also were not observant enough to notice that we opened the cat door again after the wind died down.

We didn't realize that the cats were trying to be polite and hold in the call of nature until around bedtime, when Echo came upstairs into the bedroom where we were, scratched around in the corner where we used to keep a litterbox (but don't anymore), and finally peed a HUGE puddle of urine onto the floor.

I grabbed her and carried her downstairs and shoved her out the cat door, so she could see that it was open again. Then I came back up to mop up the accident. While doing so, I noticed that Oliver was slinking around the room, looking anxious and guilty, so I grabbed him too. As I carried him to the cat door as well, I could tell that his bladder was VERY full. I think I averted a second accident by mere moments.

Poor kitties, they didn't remember that we do have litterboxes, and once they saw that the cat door was shut, it didn't occur to them to check whether it might have been opened again.