Done In! Never Ending Project Turns Into Obsession!

The never ending under eaves cat run project has become an obsession.  The project has morphed.  I tell my cats, "Perhaps I will finish it in my life time and perhaps not."

It began as good intention.  Some cats can't get by the cats with issues through the narrow garage cat run to access the cat yard.  Yet they want to.  I have guard cats, who like to keep less confident cats from having some fun out in the yard.  So they attack them as they try to squeeze by in the narrow run out through the garage over my car.  Not cool!

So, I thought to myself, I better make a secondary access.

I thought about a zip line from the dining room window across.  How cool would that be?

I thought about creating side by side slides, braked with counter weight, sloped opposingly.  The cat would enter an enclosed platform.  A piece off the bottom of the platform would fit into a slit cut out of the side of a pvc pipe and attach inside the pvc pipe to a smaller short piece of pipe that would have a cable attached.  The cable would run at the top of the sloped pvc down another vertical pvc pipe and attach to a counter weight inside the vertical pipe to control speed (except for with one exceptionally fat cat, who would get a fast ride).  The platform and pipe would be enclosed in a circular wire tube, to contain the cat on the ride to the other side.  A similar contraption could bring them back, sloped from the cat yard down.

Spectacular?  Yes!

In the end, I decided on a cat run under the eaves, running under the garage from the corner of the cat yard, making a right turn to run under the house in front of the kitchen and then the dining room window, where they could enter and exit.

But that would take wood and wood costs money.

Then I saw a free wood sign!!!  And the wood looked for all the world like it was dropped from heaven, in preformed runs!  There were also old 2x4's from a dismantled fence.  I stopped!  The woman, who was building houses to sell there on the corner, was all too anxious to get that wood gone.  So she agreed to cut into 8 foot sections to accomodate my car.  Some sections were 30 feet long.  I hauled it all home in three trips.

Then they sat.  Rain had hit Oregon.  Deluges of rain. The rain lasted through June.  So I did very little work on the project.  Finally some breaks in the rain came and I began the task of painting everything.  I had many cans of paint given me by my tow truck company friends.  They were in the back of a truck and severely rusted so that you could not even tell what color the paint might be until you opened a can and stirred.  Some cans were no good, but most were ok, but I had no choice in the colors.  Free is free.

I ended up buying four 2x4's and a few hardware pieces but that's it.  I am also still using the unwanted Millersburg wood left in a scrap pile for me by a guy remodeling his house after it burned.

Now, the project might be nearing completion, but already I am thinking of more add ons.  Before I even get it operational!   I haven't even seriously hurt myself in the project.  Not yet anyhow.  I did accidentally drill a hole in my hand near my thumb, when the drill slipped.  That has healed now, with just a red scar remaining.  There has been cursing, black and blue fingernails, cuts, screws imbedded in the bottom of my foot, that sort of thing, but no broken bones or concussions.  That's a good thing.