Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Bad enough my heating bills go up on natural gas cost, carbon taxes, delivery etc. but I’m not as bad off as a pet owner. 5 years ago in UK…

https://www.companionlife.co.uk/besotted...gy-a-year/

Pretty much the same here in the colonies. I’m sure those numbers are even higher today.

When I worked on furnaces it was not surprising to find furnace fans (squirrel cage), filters, air returns, ducts and even a/c coils clogged with shed animal hair. Sometimes the complaint might be a burning hair smell, furnace keeps running, furnace keeps going on and off but for the most part the biggest squawk was about high heating cost. Makes you wonder how pet ancestors ever survived before domestication. If it’s -10°C outside, it doesn’t have to be 75° inside, especially when you’re not there. The whole trick is to heat as much air possible when you’re there with least gas usage.

My advice: Stop pampering the house guest wearing the fur coat. Check furnace filter regularly.

I would think the same goes for plants.

Never had an indoor pet. If they can't handle a well-insulated doghouse or cat-house that's in a nook blocked from the wind, sporting padded comforts, with a shielded entrance, heated water bowl, etc -- then they truly are a degenerate branch of their wild canine or feline ancestors. (Not that I've ever owned a cat. Don't like that mind-control parasite they carry.)

Chickens are descended from tropical jungle fowl, for pete's sake -- nobody brings a flock of them into the house during the winter. That's what tough is -- spawned in a warm clime of the world, yet sitting stoically on those roosting poles in the henhouse like feathered dinosaurs, while the blizzard howls outside. Don't even bring up what cattle have to endure.