We have a barn cat that lives in a heated shed. We lock him in every night.
The shed happens to be our water building which has our cistern and the pressure switch for the well pump as well as the jet pump that feeds the house from the cistern.
This summer, Blizzard (the cat), figured out how to remove the cover from the cat door and escape during the night. I dealt with this by rigging up a 1” x .25” cross bar over the cat door cover that is held in place with a hair pin on each side. Numerous times, we have gone to let him out in the morning to find the cover lifted up half way but not enough for el bastardo to escape.
His latest trick is opening the man door. I have no idea how he turns the knob, but he does. We come out in the morning to find the door open.
This is a fair weather cat. He doesn’t venture out below -10C, and rarely goes out in the rain. Last night at -40, he decided to open the door. Not like he would venture out at these temperatures... he is a bastard.
We woke up this morning to the entire water system frozen cockstiff. The pump case split.
The pressure switch for the well pump is also frozen so it keeps wanting to run. The pressure has overcome the float valve in the cattle waterer so we have a creek over there. I replaced the guts to the float valve and float in -32C weather before I realized that was happening...
We just got the water flowing to the house again a few minutes ago. The well pump switch is still frozen. It warms up a bit tomorrow. The cows will have to eat snow for a day or so until we get this sorted and can turn the well pump back on...
Imagine doing all this on crutches with one working leg...
Here is little bastardo...
