The Door: Part 4

I would love to start this post out with cocoon progress but I can't this week.  You see, Cassandra had to have surgery to remove what turned out to be a tumor on her neck.  It was small (about the size of a lentil) and had been shrinking (it started out the size of a chick pea) but hadn't gone away in the time the vet gave it to resolve on it's own.  I had hoped it would be a little fat pocket or something like that but no dice and we won't know if it's benign or malignant until the pathology results come back.  Cass got through everything just fine, though she was really woozy for a good long while and I'm pretty sure she hasn't forgiven me for taking her in to get cut on, but I did get a purr today so at least she doesn't hate me.

Cass wasn't terribly thrilled with having her picture taken
but she let me so long as I didn't try to take a shot of her
shaved surgical area.  You can see a bit of it on the left side of the photo,
the little red dot is the bottom of the incision.

As you can imagine, I've been a wreck.  I don't react well to unpleasant things happening to my girls.  Hell, I don't much care for leaving them alone over a weekend so you can imagine how jumpy I was about a surgery.  I had all week to stress over it and on the day of there was much anxiety until I heard from the vet.  That was around 2pm so I spent the vast majority of the day in sheer terror that something awful would happen to her on the table.  Then I spent the evening watching her to make sure she didn't have any problems coming off the remaining anesthesia and making sure she started eating again at some point.  And there was the whole neither cat recognized the other once they got home thing.  That was fun.  I had to keep them apart for several hours because they kept hissing at each other and the last thing we needed was a cat fight.  But, we're all doing great today.  The sisters have finally realized that they are sisters and that I didn't bring home the wrong cat and I've spent the whole day home making sure everyone got along and that recovery progressed positively.

I did try to keep myself distracted with craft projects but, unfortunately, crocheting didn't fit the bill.  Working on the cocoon wasn't a good distraction because I don't have to think about doing it which meant my brain could dwell on worst case scenarios and so on.  So I left the yarn alone this week and I did some Halloween stuff instead.  It usually takes a lot more thought and a lot more activity than yarn stuff which made it an ideal candidate for distraction.  I got absolutely no housework done but I got a couple projects finished and some others started.

The big deal is the door is (practically) done!  Ok, ok, it isn't ALL the way done but it's only missing the little red clamps and it is done enough that I was able to set it up.  For today's purposes that counts as done (I'll add a new pic or two when the clamps get done and added and that will be in about 2 weeks).

When we last left the door it was with a pic very similar to this.

The difference between then and now is that I've made some new side connectors on the frame and these ones fit!

Much hot gluing later and I was ready for a test run.  There had been some changes made so I had no idea how well the door was going to fit.  I was right, it didn't fit the way I expected.  I had to change where it was to go because my linen closet was in the way.  After a bit of exceedingly gentle finagling (that middle seam is nothing like as strong as I would like.  I'm probably going to have to add some reinforcement on the back.  I'll post the end results when I do) I got the door in place and stable enough to photograph.  The I got to stand back and enjoy the "I can't believe that worked!" moment.

Seriously, how cool is that?!!  The window turned out to be at exactly my eye height.  I have no idea how I managed that one.  However, I am really happy with how well it fills the hallway and I think it should work out well with the sheet plastic one all that goes up.  As thrilled as I am with how the door turned out, it might surprise you that this wasn't the project that made me feel like a badass.  I'm working on that post next and I should have it up in a day or two.  Apparently nervous energy is really good for getting stuff done!