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Dilbert's Ultimate House
angkor writes "Dilbert's Ultimate House (DUH) is the product of the combined wisdom of thousands of Dilbert readers, plus the help of real world experts, and it's online for viewing at dilbert.com/duh. Are you tired of tripping over the cat's litter box in your bathroom? Dilbert's house has its own bathroom just for the cat. Do you hate dragging a Christmas tree into the house every December just to throw it away in January? Dilbert's house has a huge closet off of the Great Room where he stores a fully decorated artificial tree on wheels..."
You must not change it often - when my cat uses the litter, it stinks for a couple minutes but then clears right up.
I keep my cat's litter box in the bathroom because I have nowhere else to put it. I have no basement, no closets that are out of the way, etc.
--RJ
http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
As someone with a strong interest in energy-efficient, environmentally-sound house building techniques, this is a fantastic way to both rise awareness of current possibilities for reducing dramatically electricity bills (though the house could have used some grey water system combined with tanks for rainwater, and a seperate sewage treatment and containment system.
The guided tour pages are a treasure of information, especially the one on the exterior design, which introduces nice construction materials and other very neat gadgets.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Generally, when you quote from someone else's work, such as how the entirety of the submission in this case is quoted from yesterday's Dilbert newsletter, you mention that you're doing it and enclose it in quotation marks.
m l/newsletter57.html
Here is the original from which the submission was directly quoted:
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/ht
Launch the "virtual tour" and go to the "layout". It has a floorplan that you mouse over to find out what things are.
The cat won't use that litterbox. She can't see the whole room from it, the window above is a possible avenue for predators, it's not sheltered, and it's too close to the food bowl.
Move the box behind the door, away from the windows and food/bed, and your cat will stop pooping all over the house.
Also, cats don't need a stairway to climb 2.5 feet unless you have kittens.
We keep one around for when we get kittens. First, they're house broken and taught to use the litter box. Then they're taught to go outside instead. Works like a charm. No litter box to smell/clean/change, and nothing to worry about tripping over in the yard either. One of the better things about cats: they look after themselves.
We used to do that. Now we have 2 kittens, and they'll never go outside. The last cat we owned was loved by all in the neighborhood. He went missing for a couple of days and came back with a respiratory infection that killed him in a few weeks of trying everything we could. We think he got stuck in a garage or something and inhaled something bad. The one previous to that got FIV from another cat and died of an opportunistic toxoplasmosis infection. Neither cat lived past 7.
The life span of indoor cats is in the 15-20 year range. For outdoor cats it's 5 to 7. Please don't interpret this reply as an indignant condemnation of your having an outdoor cat. Like I said, I did it for years, so I have no sense of self-righteousness about this. But the pain of losing those cats was really awful, and I'd just like to put the suggestion out there.
There are alternatives, too. We are in the process of procuring a cat run, which is a covered wire mesh tunnel that lets cats go outside, get some fresh air and sun, chase some bugs, and not be bothered by other animals or hit by cars.
Having to euthanize a terminally ill cat sucks. A lot.