Waste not, Want not

Back in October Aunt Lois remarked that I'm not really making any more improvements on my house. And she's right. But those of you who are anxiously awaiting news related to that - here's one....
I've been wanting to do this for a while, but it was pretty low on the list-o-priorities. The kitchen on the first floor is leaky leaky leaky (as in air). There is one good window, one I should have covered in plastic by now, and a door that has (and I'm not kidding) a quarter of an inch of daylight around it where air gets in. The high for today was 23F. Tonight it should be 11F. That's cold. Since the room is so far from the thermostat I've put it low on the totem pole of things to be addressed, but what I've wanted to do is take the left over door from my 2nd floor bathroom and hang it in the doorway to this kitchen. Jeff make a bigger doorway when he remodeled my beautiful bathroom, and I decided I wanted to keep the old door. For the last two years, I've been wondering if I made the right decision. And the answer is yes. I had to hang the door tonight.... And just by the way... I don't get it... Jeff was always whining about how hard it is to hang a door. Seriously - you just have to make sure you have enough stuff underneath it to prop it up to the right height - then it's a piece of cake! But I digress...
Yes I HAD to hang the door tonight because right now, my neighbor's dog is in there, and he needs to stay in there.
Yeeeaaah, I'm not sure what happened, but last night I went out, kinda late to give the dogs a treat before I went to bed. (My neighbor has two dogs, I'm a sucker for a cute face so I give them lots of treats.) The next thing I know, the puppy is running around in my yard! I didn't know what to do, so I coaxed him into my house and locked him into the kitchen. I called my neighbor today to let him know I had the puppy, and he said he'd be home sometime this afternoon. I said I'd keep an eye out for him so I could get him back. As far as I know he never showed. Soooo..... I still have him.
At first I just had the door propped in the doorway to keep him in. That only lasted last night. This morning he promptly knocked it over. So I went to Home Depot and go the replacement hinges and hung the door. Its a good thing I decided to get some latches as well, because the door will stay shut on it's own, as long as nothing bumps it. The second it's bumped it springs open. So the little one is holed up in the kitchen on my old egg crate with a fresh piece of grey buckram for a potty.
The grey buckram? Yeah, so, while I was working in my studio I let him run around on the first floor. I was a little concerned because he hadn't gone potty anywhere that I'd seen. Only one little piddle on the bathroom floor which was hardly anything. While I was hanging the door though, I had to go back to my studio for something and I caught a whiff.... a whiff that only dog poop can smell like. So, now ya gotta find it and you can only use your nose! But I was lucky, it wasn't hard to spot. I had put down some scrap cheap grey buckram around the windows I was stripping (last summer). Apparently that is the place to go potty. Maybe he mistook it for newspaper? I don't know, but there were two poops and two pees (one made very strategically on a cat toy). So, long story short - he got a fresh piece of paper in the kitchen tonight. Let's hope he knows what to do with it.
Poor little guy - he is so sweet. He just wants some love. I am a little worried about Petey - the other dog. He's still outside and I hope he doesn't freeze tonight. He's got a little doghouse but without the puppy, will he be warm enough? I hope so.
I know what you're thinking...and the cats? I don't think they know. Jacques has probably smelled the puppy so much he doesn't think much of it. He wanted to go out, so I shut the puppy up in the bathroom, and Jacques just stomped right by, didn't pay any attention. Swee'pea, on the other hand, knows some thing's amiss. He smells something he doesn't understand. And the two of them? They are getting along much, much better. Its starting to feel like it's always been this way. Animals are just amazing.