An awfully big adventure

Before Maisie came here to live, I had to get the cover on the cat flap so she could be kept inside for a couple of weeks to bond with the place. It’s so long since the cover has been on the flap that I had to use rather a lot of tape to secure it.

Yes, that is a very large cat flap, but Tri in his day was a very large cat who struggled to fit through an ordinary cat flap.

In addition to the cover on the cat flap, there was a baby gate Jean loaned me. 

The fortnight was over on Saturday and the gate removed, but I’d been waiting for a day when it wasn’t pouring with rain and that day was yesterday.

Off came the cover. I picked Maisie up, brought her out into the kitchen, put her down on the floor and pushed the flap open for her to have a look.

Out she went.

I opened the door and she turned around quickly to check there was no trickery involved.

A sniff around the deck, then straight under it for several minutes. Fair enough. All a bit overwhelming. I got on with the job I needed to do on the deck. Eventually she emerged and started to explore properly.

Up the back path…

… and into the woods.

Then back to the house to attempt re-entry. Unfortunately, she tried pushing the flap from the top, which doesn’t work, and when it didn’t she was back under the deck. 

When she emerged the second time, I put her in front of the door, pushed the flap from the bottom. In she went. Five minutes later out she came again. By George, she’s got it!

As I sit here typing I’ve been hearing the cat flap regularly. Maisie is now officially an indoor/outdoor cat. Sincerely hope she will decide that it is much more satisfactory scratching trees than it is scratching furniture.

Oh, just for the hell of it, here’s another Maisie pic.

And what, you may ask if you remember that far back, was the job that needed to be done on the deck?

Well, after the first heavy rainfall of the autumn, one of the big ceramic pots (the one which used to contain the butterfly bush killed by last winter’s deep freeze) was flooded. The water just didn’t drain away. Tried poking around with a pointy stick, but to no avail. Tried raising it off the deck with a couple of thin pipes. Nope. Why wasn’t it draining? At some point I was going to have to clear it out and figure out what the problem was. (I do want to get another butterfly bush for it next spring.) I figured yesterday was a good day, as it would keep me outside with Maisie for her first foray into the great unknown.

I’d already tipped most of the excess water out before I remembered to take a pic.

Rubber gloves on to commence scooping. Close to the bottom I began to wonder if it was possible there was no drainage hole at all – something I surely would have registered when I first filled it with earth?

Finally got to the bottom of it, as it were.

One tiny drainage hole in a huge pot, which I’d obvious not positioned above a space between the deck planks. Used another pointy stick to clear it out where it was packed solid with mud. Hmm. The pot clearly needs a bigger drainage hole or more drainage holes or something. The question is how to increase drainage without cracking the ceramic pot, rendering it useless. What sort of tool would this require and who has one? The best I could manage is large nails and a hammer which I’m pretty sure would just wreck the pot. Suggestions welcome.