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Heat
Kitty, Kitty
I’ve
been increasing homeland security in my kitchen lately with
a little help from a couple of my feline friends. No, I haven’t
been preparing a safe space of plastic sheeting and duct tape
under the sink for the critters. I also haven’t prepared them
an evacuation kit in case cat-hating terrorists unleash toxins
fatal to felines in my neighborhood. What I have been doing
is making my kitchen more energy efficient so that the cats
and I can stay a bit warmer through the remaining days of
a winter that seems to not want to let up. The less energy
used, the more secure, affordable and sustainable becomes
my habitable bit of homeland.
My cats, Zuni and Chaco, don’t know anything about politicians,
terrorists or war, but they do know something about staying
warm. Spread out in front of the wood stove or draped over
a radiator filled with hot water, this pair of refugees from
a regional animal shelter enter some all-relaxing cat nirvana
as they absorb available heat. As I examined some of the options
for keeping my kitchen a little warmer, I realized that the
cats had a role to play.
Off my kitchen is a door that leads to steps to both a side
entrance and the basement. Through this basement door can
pass a lot of cool air that can bring the temperature in my
house down. Frigid air directly from outside enters through
the side door as people come and go. My basement is unheated
and now hovers around 50 degrees, providing another chilling
air source.
Because my cats have their litter box in the basement, closing
the basement door during the winter months could lead to unwelcome
odiferous results far worse than a cold breeze. So during
past winters, the door has remained ajar just enough to allow
the four-footed creatures to come and go as they please.
Leaving the door to the basement open during the winter allows
cold air from the side entrance to directly rush into the
first floor of my house. It also creates a heat sink where
the basement air easily infiltrates the kitchen and cools
the warm air. Leaving the door open enough for the cats to
come and go resulted in the equivalent of a three-and-a-half
square-foot hole for chilled air to pass through. I realized
that any reduction of the size of that hole could help keep
things warmer, particularly in the kitchen.
A few years back, I figured that the solution to this basement
draft was to close the door and install a pet door. I had
checked out a number of commercially available pet doors,
but these seemed designed for dogs going in and out from the
outdoors and were made of overpriced cheap-looking plastic.
It seemed to me that it should be simple enough to just cut
a “cat hole” in the door to give the felines unfettered basement
access.
Before getting my drill and saw buzzing, some experimental
research was necessary. I had to calculate the smallest possible
hole my feline friends could pass through. In order to figure
out the right size for the cat hole, I tried to measure Zuni,
a Janus-faced calico and the more weight-challenged of the
two. Cats are not the easiest animals to measure because of
their flexible slinkiness. I got some rough measures and then
figured I’d test out hole sizes with some junk cardboard I
had around. I cut a hole in the cardboard and then had Zuni
go through it. She saw no merit to this testing, offered some
protest, but ultimately complied. After enlarging the hole
to where the full- figured feline could easily pass through,
I used the piece of cardboard as a template to draw the lines
on the basement door for the cat hole. I centered the lines
along the bottom of the inner section of the door, which is
constructed of quarter-inch plywood, and about 10 inches from
the floor.
I drilled holes inside the corners of the rectangle drawn
on the door large enough to accommodate the blade of my jigsaw,
which I then used to cut out a 6-inch by 9-inch piece of wood.
I filed and sanded the edges of the opening and then closed
the basement door. It was test time again. I leaned up against
the kitchen counter and watched. The cats’ curiosity was quickly
drawn to my handiwork. They were soon jumping through the
hole and seemed quite agreeable to the new setup for getting
into the basement.
The new cat hole shrunk the size of the door opening into
my basement from 504 square inches to 54 square inches, resulting
in more than a ninefold reduction in the opening. A draft
still passed through the hole, but it was through a much smaller
opening than what would result from leaving the door open.
I next rigged up a small curtain to cover the opening. I used
an 8-inch scrap piece of 1-inch by 2-inch wood and some leftover
material that had been used a number of years back to recover
couch cushions. I glued and stapled the material to one side
of the scrap wood and then used wood screws to fix it in place
over the hole. The tight material helped substantially stem
the cool draft passing through. The cats had no problem pushing
through the curtain. A sweep attached to the bottom of the
door added a snug fit to the floor.
While my cat hole is not a dramatically new or technologically
sophisticated energy device, it has increased the efficiency
of keeping my home warm with little cost. It may be a small
thing, but when it comes to reducing energy consumption, every
little bit may help bring about real security in the homes
of this homeland and make sustainable peace a real possibility.
My cats are purring.
—Tom
Nattell
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