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Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

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Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#151

Post by DanBC »

kyteland wrote: post #139
bserge wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember having one... It had no ground wire... Thinking about it now, I'm really surprised I never got electrocuted or that it didn't catch on fire, it was really flimsy.

Electric blankets aren't intended to be used while you are in the bed. Your own body heat can keep the bed warm and they're dangerous to run while sleeping. Their intended purpose is to warm the bed before your own body is in there to do the work. It avoids the first few minutes of sheet shock when jumping into a cold bed before your body heat catches up to the task.

There are different types of electric blanket.

eg this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Morphy-Richards-Washable-Underblank...

All night use

NOTE: Blankets are perfectly safe to be used all night. However we recommend using the heat setting below.

•Move the heat setting on the control switch to heat level 1or 2.

These settings will provide safe and comfortable heat to sleep on all night.

These settings can be used to air the bed.

WARNING: Always ensure that the slider switch is moved to the OFF position when you get up the next day, or after airing the bed.

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#152

Post by Alupis »

NateEag wrote: post #143
mnw21cam wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umwhat? If your cat is running away when you set it loose, you're not doing it right.

I suspect OP misspelled 'lose'. My wife's first cat died trying to beat a car across the road in front of their house. Outdoor cats meet similar fates regularly.

Yes, I mean "lose", typeo.

Raccoons, coyotes, dogs, mean kids, cars, etc. There are many ways for an outdoor cat to meet a premature death - usually in gruesome ways.

It's simply not safe to let cats roam outdoors anymore - particularly in urban neighborhoods.

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#153

Post by oh_sigh »

mark-r wrote: post #87
lrissman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup, I go camping in the Canadian winter and have been overnight many nights at below -35C, might have hit a balmy -40C before.. not sure.. Below, is super important.. I use closed-cell mats designed for winter camping and carrying in the backpack. Somehow I don't think the cats would work so well under the sleeping bags..

Interesting bit of trivia: at -40 it's not necessary to specify C or F, that's the point where they're both the same. When I was a kid in the boy scouts, they had an award they gave out when the total low (with wind chill) on the days you camped added up to -100F. I got the award one weekend - one day was -60, the other was -40.

It is necessary to specify it because what happens if someone tells you it was -40 and then it got 1 degree warmer. How cold is it now?

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#154

Post by thedanbob »

saynay wrote: post #129
thedanbob wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discovered this on my annual backpacking trip during a particularly cold winter. I sleep in a zero degree bag in a hammock, but my bag has most of the insulation on top so my back was freezing. Next year I brought a nice thick blanket to line the hammock and I’ve always been comfortable since.

Your weight compresses most of the insulation beneath you, and the hammock itself provides less than no insulation. If you aren't, you should put the blanket on the outside of the bottom of the hammock (suspended beneath it), so it has more volume and thus insulation.

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought of that. The blanket is pretty dense and relatively incompressible, but I'll have to try that and see if the difference is noticeable (if I can figure out how to attach it like that).

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#155

Post by mark-r »

oh_sigh wrote: post #153
mark-r wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting bit of trivia: at -40 it's not necessary to specify C or F, that's the point where they're both the same. When I was a kid in the boy scouts, they had an award they gave out when the total low (with wind chill) on the days you camped added up to -100F. I got the award one weekend - one day was -60, the other was -40.

It is necessary to specify it because what happens if someone tells you it was -40 and then it got 1 degree warmer. How cold is it now?

Obviously it's -39, and since -39C and -39F are different you'd now be required to specify. If you knew which scale the 1 degree was from it wouldn't be difficult.

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#156

Post by saalweachter »

rtkwe wrote: post #30
viraptor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in an outside enclosure. They're not very hard to install around your fence.

I will say cats are crazy escape artists. We had to confine ours after a move to make sure they didn't make a mess or escape while we reassembled our house but the room didn't have any doors so we piled up boxes and they just got better and better at escaping. This escalated to one of our cats jumping up and slamming a box off the top to make his escape.

I was rearranging a bedroom once, and flipped the mattress vertically, long-ways, against the wall to make room to move everything else around. Literally as I was lifting the mattress a cat started climbing up it to reach the new, higher vantage point in the room.

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#157

Post by carabiner »

hippich wrote: post #82
carabiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, one of my cats has had nothing wrong with him. The other got into some pills I left on the counter and had $8k in vet fees to treat poisoning, thank god for pet insurance.

can you share the name of the insurance?

trupanion

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#158

Post by oh_sigh »

mark-r wrote: post #155
oh_sigh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is necessary to specify it because what happens if someone tells you it was -40 and then it got 1 degree warmer. How cold is it now?

Obviously it's -39, and since -39C and -39F are different you'd now be required to specify. If you knew which scale the 1 degree was from it wouldn't be difficult.

It's -40 and it got -1 degree F colder. How cold is it now?

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#159

Post by BLKNSLVR »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #126
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to choose between these two options: 1. Removal of splinter from pet cat's eyeball: $1,650 2. Removal of cat's eyeball: $1,400 Blew out my pet budget for a long while. I have the photo that the vet ophthalmologist took - they were cool enough to send it to us.

Apologies if it's insensitive, but I'm curious what the financial cost of "putting cat down and acquiring new cat" would be; mere intellectual curiosity.

$50 to get a vet to put a cat down. And roughly the same amount to get a desexed, flea-treated moggy from a shelter.

Re: Cat vs. panel heater: which is better?

#160

Post by mark-r »

oh_sigh wrote: post #158
mark-r wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it's -39, and since -39C and -39F are different you'd now be required to specify. If you knew which scale the 1 degree was from it wouldn't be difficult.

It's -40 and it got -1 degree F colder. How cold is it now?

It's now -41F. It's not really rocket science, unless you're trying to trick me with a double negative.
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