Huckleberry's Door
Huckleberry is an indoors-outdoors cat, but
yesterday he decided that he was most decidedly an indoors cat.
When Mark and I came home from a day spent visiting, we were a bit
surprised to find Huckleberry curled up on the futon. Surely I'd
put him out before leaving the house that morning --- but maybe he'd
slipped back past us as we were leaving? He seemed quite content
to be inside away from the cold weather, so I didn't think any more
about it.
Until a few hours later, that is, when I put him out for the night and
snuggled up in bed with a book. Just as my book sucked me in,
little feet came padding down the hallway and Huckleberry announced his
presence with a pleased "Meow!"
What in the world? I
shot out of bed and did a little exploring, quickly discovering the new
"cat door." While we'd been gone all day, Huckleberry had
deviously ripped the air hose to the outdoor wood furnace out of the
wall, creating a massive hole through which he could easily prance into
the house. Thanks a lot, Huckleberry!
This morning, I
discovered that scientists
are right --- cold hands make cold hearts. Between
Huckleberry's cat door letting in frigid air, the golf cart having
frozen into the mud overnight so that we couldn't get the tires to roll
and collect the wood Mark had cut at the other end of the property, and
the chainsaw's gas having somehow frozen solid so that we couldn't cut
any closer wood, I was cold and irritable. Luckily for me, Mark
solved all of our problems, even managing to start a fire out of wet
kindling on a cold day. As the interior temperature tops 60 F, my
heart has begun to thaw. 
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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