Doors
I live with two dogs and two cats. They all need me to let them in and out.
This is because I worry. I worry that if I made them their own door, they’d get in trouble. Casey the Border Collie would freak out at some noise and claw himself over the fence and run off. Jess the Calico Cat would take to working the streets and never come back again.
Charlotte the Mildly Autistic Tortoise Shell would likely still hang around and sleep on my spot on the couch. She likes being an indoor-ish cat. Caught herself a big mouse on the stoop this evening though. I was effusive with praise. Jess hung back and looked at me a bit plaintively, perhaps suggesting that she’d had a role in this fine capture of this exceptionally impressive mouse?
Likely. I’ve seen them tag-team before.
My other inhouse non-human here is The Fabulous Furry Frolicking Falcor. All my pets are rescues, and he and the cats date from last year. Falc is a border collie-Great Pyrenees cross, and is okay left in the yard, but still, I worry. What if something horribly terrifying happened while I was gone? I’ve only been his human since last summer. We haven’t done the thunderstorm thing since the weather hasn’t been cooperating.
So, I do the door thing all the time. I keep my non-human peeps here in, I keep them out occasionally. But it all seems so rude on my part.
There is an ex-pet door, covered over with plywood, that I could uncover and rework. I could also fit it with a movable cover.
Point being, I spend a lot of time here on my turf. I like to keep doors closed because of flies. (mosquitoes are technically flies.) So why am I being so controlling about this door thing with my nonhuman friends?
I can probably fix this by knocking out a little sheetrock, maybe cutting back a few two-by-fours some, and making some kind of flap and then working out an interior barrier with plywood and slotted hardware.
Yes, I can.
