Winterizing Gus

Winters are brutal when you live on the shores of a Great Lake.  They're even more brutal if you're a one eyed, slack jawed, overly matted, brain damaged, terrified of people and won't come into the house, schizophrenic cat named Gus.

Yes, this is just another Gus story.

While he sits in the garden, soaking up the last warm rays of sunshine, we begin our annual fretfest.

In our quest to keep him as warm as possible while the icicles are dripping off of the eaves, we've been employing a heated pad of the variety used in barns to keep livestock from turning into pigsicles and such.  The pad reaches the same temperature as that of a forty watt light bulb.  Kevin puts it on a long stick and pushes it into the furthest, darkest corner under the porch that is the preferred residence of our Frankencat.  We know he uses it because it's covered in his fur when we remove it in the spring.  We leave this plugged in all winter long.

Could that be enough?  No.  This year, Kevin lined the lattice work that covers the bottom of the porch in insulating material with the hope of staving off the harsh winter winds from the lake.  Could that be enough?  No.

One of us geniuses came up with the idea of somehow getting a little shelter into that back corner for him; one that would go over the heating pad and help retain some of the warmth for him.  We initially thought of a bale of hay, but I got worried about the fire hazard with the heating pad.  So, after several shopping trips, we came up with this:

This is the dome for a covered kitty litter box.  The next problem we encountered was how we were going to get it into the deepest, darkest recesses of the porch and over the heating pad to boot.  The porch sits very low to the ground and Kevin's recent knee surgery put the kibosh on him trying to get under there himself.  Well, that's why we have kids, isn't it?  Enter our hero:

My son, Matt.  Young, strong and owing his mother and stepfather more than just gratitude for saving his butt on more than one recent occasion, he was more than willing to help our cause.  Besides, he's one of the few individuals that Gus will allow to touch at times.

Donning Kevin's best Gomer suit, armed with a flashlight, a bag of Gus' fur chunks that I harvested from the patio and a bag of catnip with which he was going to bait the new abode of the Skitterish One, he was ready to begin spelunking.

"Ummm, you really want me to go under there?"

He wiggled and writhed like a snake, but my boy came through. 

When I look at these pictures, now, I can't believe I made my child do this.

The job completed, we were able to breathe a temporary sigh of relief.  We know we've done all we could do this year.  We're sure that if Gus survives another winter, we'll come up with yet another idea to aid in his survival next year.

Regardless of what we've done, we'll still waste a couple hundred precious fuel dollars as we stand with the back door open when Gus comes to eat.  We'll try to coax him in, even though we know it would be disastrous if he did.  We'll spend a great deal of time looking out the back windows in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him.  We'll feed every stray cat, squirrel and bird in the neighborhood in an attempt to keep his dish filled.

Every bump and contour in the snow covered landscape will take on an ominous new possibility as we look at each other and ask, "Have you seen Gus today?"