Cue angels with trumpets, please

[abendgules]

The glazier showed up today, to remove a pane in the lounge and replace it with one with a cutout sized for the catflap...about 6 weeks after initial contact with them. Not quite a Monty Python cheese shop sale, but a near thing.

Cat 'owners' reading this will appreciate just how much this change matters to our household.

Robert stayed home to supervise but had to run to work before ensuring both the 'in' and 'out' worked for our microchipped puss, so I get to set up and test the features this evening.

We've already established that fresh batteries are needed - stale ones cause it to error.

More interesting was chatting with the local-boy glazier, who says a big house stood where our block of maisonettes now stand, and he thinks our shared garden is on the old pond where he used to swim. He seems to remember problems with the building early on, because of subsidence; if it really is built on a pond it's no surprise!

I'm pretty sure this block is over 50 now, so hopefully it's slid as far as it's going to without prompting from tremors or something.

Comments

[ormsweird.livejournal.com]

We had this done to our french doors when we moved into the new house. It has stood us very well. But the Norwegians Thor and Loki turned two today and have another year of bulking out to do. Given that Thor is already over 6kg this means at some point we have to upgrade to a small dog flap. I am not looking forward to this!

Thankfully as things stand he can still cope - in other words he can still belt through it after the much lither Nyx-mog-cat if he desires right now. But soon....?

[acorngirl.livejournal.com]

Wow - cat flap technology has sure advanced over the past few years! Mind you, clunky though it looks now with a big ol' desktop running the thing, I still think this is the coolest idea ever: a cat flap that not only detects the right cat(s), but rejects them if they come bearing "gifts": kitty-belonging-here: yes; kitty-belonging-here-with-mouse: not a chance, pal! :)

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Wait, you're in the UK? It will be brick, right? Unreinforced? Built on a filled pond/soft sediment? 'quake deathtrap, then. Probably come down in about a magnitude five or above.

Not that you get enough of them to worry about (passive margins)

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

Yes, to all except I don't know how to tell if it's reinforced or not. But yes.

And we're on the ground floor, in a part of the building that is 'only' 1 storey.

I guess NZ will be producing and graduating a generation of geologists and really quake-savvy builders and engineers...