I used to think it was sad to use vacation days to do home renovations. But, to be fair, back then I had fewer vacation days to take, and a stronger desire to travel.
Anyway, it’s not like we didn’t have any fun on our big two days off. Wednesday night I had book club, aka “hanging out with friends”. Thursday Jean had canoe trip with his friends. And that night we reunited and went to Stratford to see Rent.
(I really liked it. Jean quite enjoyed the dancing, but found it difficult to follow the plot with so much of it sung.)
Saturday night we drove to Guelph and met some friends for dinner. We ate at Buon Gusto. They have a lovely streetside patio, and it was just a perfect day for al fresco dining: Warm but not too hot or humid; just a light breeze; blue skies all around.
The food was also excellent. Service was a bit slow at first, but we weren’t in any particular rush. It gave us more time to talk with these friends that we hadn’t seen for about a year! Great catching up with them.
But the big project between those events was taking down our previous cat enclosure (built around one of those carport things) and replacing with a custom-built one.
We’d started working on this project earlier in the summer and had a lot of the framing completed. But at some point it had to be “out with the old, in with the new”, and we wanted to minimize how much time the cats were stuck indoors as a result. So this time off seemed suited to getting that part done.
This new “catio” was sort of my idea, and I bought a plan to get us started, but then Jean adapted it and fully took the lead on it, as I am quite hopeless at this stuff. But I was out there with him the whole time and helped with whatever I could.
The doors were fiddly, but that was kind of expected. That we hadn’t bought enough fencing to fully make it around all parts the enclosure was not expected. That seemed an issue, especially given that it takes two weeks to get more.
But, here we were saved by the principle of reuse: As the bottom layer, in most places, we used the fencing we had deployed on the old catio. That gave us enough of the new stuff to cover the rest of it.
When nearly done, we took Mac out to test it.
After walking it around for a bit, he quickly demonstrated that he could climb right up the fencing to the top of the structure. (We will be adding a roof, but that was always planned for a slightly later weekend.)
Fortunately, we still had some pieces of new fencing left, and so were able to create an “overhang” all around it that, so far, seems to be keeping Mac in.
Addendum: After a week, this morning I looked out to find Mac up on the top ledge of the “catio” once again. He walked along the top, seeming unsure what to do (it is pretty high), and finally jumped back down inside. I think he climbed up at a spot where the “overhang” is not as wide.
I have a bit of an idea for how to create a better barrier there, quite temporarily. I’ll discuss with Jean whether it’s at all feasible.
And we’ll at least start on the roof this weekend. Hoping to not have to take another working vacation!
Cultureguru's Weblog 