The living room window unit has a rattle that starts about four seconds after the compressor kicks on. It stops when Caleb thumps the top of the cabinet with the flat of his hand, which he does now without looking up from whatever he's reading. We've tried foam tape, a shim and a stern talk. It still rattles. Hank sleeps through it anyway, stretched out on the oak floor right where the cold air spills down, like a golden rug somebody forgot to roll up.
Our house was built in 1948, and nobody putting up a story-and-a-half in Minnesota that year was planning for central air. The radiators that keep us going in January are just heavy furniture in July. So from mid-June to about Labor Day we live with three window units and two box fans, and over four summers here we've worked out how to keep the rooms the animals actually use comfortable without paying to cool the whole house for nobody.
Three units, placed for the pets
The biggest unit sits in one of the front double-hung windows in the living room. That room is home base: Hank's orthopedic bed, the gray sofa and the stretch of floor he likes best. Mabel's summer hammock hangs in the dining room window next door, and that room borrows cold air through the wide doorway. The big maple shades the front of the house from early afternoon on, which helps more than any curtain we own.
The second unit is upstairs in our bedroom, under the eaves, where heat collects like it's being paid to. The third is in the little main-floor office where I write. Hank keeps me company in there on the days I'm home, so it earns its spot.
The kitchen is the problem. Hank has slept by the back door since the week he moved in, and no amount of cool air in the living room will talk him out of it. So one box fan sits on the floor in the kitchen doorway, pushing living room air toward the back door. It isn't elegant. He likes it. The second fan goes in an upstairs window at night, facing out, pulling hot air out of the eaves once the evening cools off.
A night routine and a day routine
Most July nights here still drop into the sixties. When it's cooler outside than inside, we shut the units off, open the downstairs windows and let the upstairs fan draw the cool air through the house. By morning the oak floors feel cold under bare feet again. Around eight the windows close, the curtains on the sunny side get pulled and the units come back on as the house starts to warm.
The windows Mabel can reach only open as far as screens we trust. After she popped a screen out of its old frame last month, I'm not taking chances with a sash wide open on a hot night.
We don't turn the living room unit off when we leave on a hot day. We set it a few degrees warmer and leave it running. That costs money, and it's the one line on the summer budget I don't argue with. Last July, with all three units working hard, our electric bill came to $131, the biggest one we got all year. This July's number won't show up until August.
The signs we watch for
Hank is a big golden dog with a thick coat, six years old and about seven weeks past his surgeon clearing him for off-leash play. He pants after a walk like every dog does. What I watch for is panting that doesn't settle after ten minutes in a cool room, a tongue that goes wide and flat at the end, thick ropey drool, pacing when he'd normally flop, or any wobble in his back end. Walks happen at six in the morning and after eight at night now, and midday potty breaks are short and shady.
Mabel is harder to read, because cats hide everything. Mostly she relocates: the hammock in the morning, the cool bathroom tile by midafternoon, under our bed if the upstairs unit is off. A cat breathing with her mouth open is a different story. At the clinic we treat that as a same-day phone call, and I'd do exactly that at home. What counts as a heat emergency for your own animal is a good question to ask your vet before the hot week shows up, not during it.
What didn't work
Two summers ago I bought a gel cooling mat at Fleet Farm for about $30. Hank sniffed it, stepped around it and lay down on the bare floor eighteen inches away. Mabel sat on it exactly once, with the look she gives anything purchased without consulting her, and has abstained ever since. It's in the basement now, doing nothing for anybody.
The basement, at least, stays cool all summer. It's also where Hank's fireworks den lives: the crate with a blanket over it and the white noise machine. The steps are steep, so we don't send him down there for the cool air on an ordinary day. Saturday night, though, when the neighborhood starts in with the bottle rockets, he'll be down there in the dark with the fan humming, and I'll be on the bottom step with a book, sweating a little and not minding.
