OK, another amusing story…well probably not amusing, but may be interesting to some because you could be faced with the same choices we are.
It may be too long if you don’t have or care about pets, but it was a big deal for us to solve.
When we did our 6 month closed system trial run this past January through June, no one left the facility for 6 months, no one entered, no supplies entered, no fast food! No city water or city sewer system, no electricity from the utility company…nothing but air, the Internet, and some radio/cell communications. Everything we needed, we had inside including electricity from our solar arrays.
Our facility capacity is around 340 but 49 of us signed on to this experiment including parents and kids of all ages. There was some initial panic when some people who thought they could talk their way out if they freaked out were not able to do so. That was not pleasant at all, but we got through it with some very supportive members who stepped up when it looked like it was all over before we even got started.
One of the decisions we made for this extended stay was to allow members to have their pets (within reason, no horses etc.) Just cats and dogs and a couple of smaller mammals. That decision has both set and changed some minds. Most of the folks that volunteered for this experiment had both spouses in jobs where they were already and could make arrangements to continue working remotely for the 6 months. My wife is a health professional and so no way she could join us, so we spoke frequently and it worked out for us to safely run my parallel pet experiment. I’ll explain.
Inside the facility, folks loved having the comfort of their pets but hated cleaning up after them in the common areas as a dog peeing in our common areas created a toxic environment that was not appreciated by anyone. Most kept their pets inside their homes/40' x 8' x 9'6" shipping containers.
It became a real chore for many, but everyone stuck it out (because they had to.) What happened inside the facility was informative, but what happened outside was as well.
Those of us that had both pets and a spouse who had to remain on the outside carried out an experiment that I had been planning for years.
We all watched it from the inside and many are now convinced they will do the same with their pets…others, although impressed, could never be parted from their pets as we successfully were.
Whether we had cats or dogs or both, we fenced our yards (months before if they weren’t already) and put in place some automated equipment that I’ve been working on with my engineers for quite a while.
We strap-mounted multi feet long, 24 in diameter PVC pipe to a wall, with a slip/threaded coupling and a threaded cap. It’s a bug proof food container. We engineered the bottom with a dosed food release with an automated timer and also tapped into the controller so it could be actuated by cell phone. Add a cellular based webcam with a big battery and you start to feel a little more comfortable leaving your pet alone. Any height or number of pipes can be arranged.
We each used a 100 gallon vertical water tank for the purpose of gravity feeding our pet’s water receptacles, but we did assume the city water would stay on for a short time if SHTF, so we sort of cheated by hooking city water up to our tanks with a float valve to keep it topped off at all times. In retrospect, we probably need to go bigger in capacity.
The last step was automating the doors for the shelter opening and the outside fence opening. (and having the programmers write a phone app to control and view it all - up to 4 doors/or food drop switches and 4 cameras at this point.) The food drop is automated, but
if it jammed, we wanted the option of trying to manually jerk it free…it never jammed on any in the 6 months.
So my wife (and other stay behinders) went to work every day, our pets had their big yards to play in, poop, pee, and whatever, but no table scraps, no treats, no going in the house! But
we did let spouses cheat and take pets for walks and pet them if they used the outside gate. Some started to lose a little weight, and only the stay behinders were able to tell us that was going on because we couldn’t really tell in the camera, but WE were able to adjust their food dose by just scheduling a third daily food drop instead of two. Many of the cats gained weight killing birds and squirrels in addition to eating their dried catfood. One cat (our’s of course) went over the 7 foot fence at will and came back most nights to sleep. This same cat also ditched it’s collar after about two months…Mom was there to replace it!
The programming/setup was:
- 2 food drops a day, skip if food overflows, keep water brimmed.
- Cameras on 24/7 motion activated, 15 second run, 15 second reset so careful where aimed. (App option to run at any time!)
- Personal shelter (included secured water, food, interior camera, exterior camera, collar activated door to prevent raccoons etc. from intruding.
- Door lock disabled for 6 hours if collar not detected for 6 hours/auto reset. (In case of collar loss)
- Personal shelters are next to house, surrounded by 7 foot tall play yard fencing.
- Play yard fencing has collar controlled gate with camera. Fence gate stays locked until:
- No food OR no water (sensors) activate collar control of outside gate so cats and dogs can leave yard to search for food and water in the neighborhood and return to the safety of their shelters. Gate auto closes and relocks after passage. (That never happened because they didn’t run out of food or water, but we verified each case with testing.)
We had many movie nights where we proceeded the movie with videos of the crazy things we videoed our cats and dogs doing!
Everyone “thinks” they know what they want to do, but of course no one really knows for sure what they’ll decide to do until really confronted by the choice. At least we now have the option to start equipping member homes with safe options for their pets if they choose to go that way in an emergency. Some have and some will keep their pets with them at all cost…and that’s fine.
Everyone understands taking personal responsibility and not infringing on our common living space.
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