the kitten in the ceiling

a riff on chaos and change

Loopholes and shortcuts?

I love them. When I built our family's cabin on my parents land,I built it as large as I could without needing to get a building permit from the city.

It is exactly 448 square feet, a mere two square feet under the maximum allowable size for an additional, building on this land. In the eyes of our municipality, it's just a really big shed.

It's a really big shed that over the last 12 years I have been slowly improving. One such improvement came eight years ago.

We decided that though we loved the look and feel of having open trusses, that it would be a good idea to install a ceiling. A ceiling would help trap the heat when it was cold. A ceiling would keep it cooler when it was warm. Most importantly, the ceiling would help prevent another bat incident.

A bat incident occurs when a poor lovely little bat would find its way into the cabin, and terrorize the family at night.

My memories of the last bat incident are unclear. I remember the screaming. I remember hidi…