Anyone Else..

In my home in Upstate NY i have a full finished basement.. and part of that is a closed off laundry room .. in that room is my Hot water tank, my furnace, my water meter, my electric panel box,. washer dryer.. and the sump pump Crock.. or as i see it huge scary hole in the floor the dehumidifier drains into.. My cat is CRAZY wanting to be in there he races down the stairs at the door when i go down there.. to do laundry .. i feel so bad i dont want him in there my sister says he needs to do "Cat work" down there.. Im so afraid he will fall in that sump pump hole.. get stuck under the furnace water heater etc..is it safe or am i just being overprotective? I feel bad saying NO NO when he wants to come with me, he sits outside the door the whole time.. 

If it were me, I'd continue to say "NO, NO, NO!"

I know you may feel bad about it but it's for his own safety.  As I've learned with my human kids, part of being a good, effective parent is having to say no.

Lily Paddy said:

 
In my home in Upstate NY i have a full finished basement.. and part of that is a closed off laundry room .. in that room is my Hot water tank, my furnace, my water meter, my electric panel box,. washer dryer.. and the sump pump Crock.. or as i see it huge scary hole in the floor the dehumidifier drains into.. My cat is CRAZY wanting to be in there he races down the stairs at the door when i go down there.. to do laundry .. i feel so bad i dont want him in there my sister says he needs to do "Cat work" down there.. Im so afraid he will fall in that sump pump hole.. get stuck under the furnace water heater etc..is it safe or am i just being overprotective? I feel bad saying NO NO when he wants to come with me, he sits outside the door the whole time.. 

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Lily - most of this can be CatProofed^{[emoji]174[/emoji]} with a bit of ingenuity and a little help from Home Depot.  Sump covers are available in a variety of shapes and styles, and putting a shroud around the base of the water heater is a pretty easy affair as well (it can be as simple as a two-part surround made of anything relatively heat-resistant).

An aside: "overprotective," isn't a bad thing at all.  I have double air-locks (three sets of doors, with foyers and  closed hallways) in the main house and the guest house, and double-door passageways in the carriage house, the garage and the summer house as well, making cat escape just about impossible.  Everything's childproofed despite never having had a single child - cabinets have hooks, outlets have caps, electrical cords have non-chew braided guards, and the computers and their addendum accessories are all tip-proofed, as is the television, owed to the fact that the Snowshoe thinks its a high narrow bed.

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