I headed out to town this afternoon to get the cash donated for tomorrow’s spays. The girls and I will be heading out later this evening to get the two ladies closed up in the isolation shelter for the night, along with a wet cat food treat, before they have to start fasting after 9pm.
On the way home from town, I stopped at the post office to pick up a parcel, and found the insulated cat house I’d ordered was in as well.
This is what we got.
The first picture in the slide show above shows the parts and pieces. The liner for the bottom, the roof and the sides are all lined with self-heating insulated material. It also came with two pegs to secure it to the ground.
The second picture shows it all assembled, plus I cut a couple of pieces from a long and thin scrap of rigid insulation we had left. They are slightly longer than the shelter itself.
When doing the evening feeding, I moved the box nests in the catio to make room for the new shelter. In the third picture, you can see it set up on top of the insulation. Since it is inside the catio, I am not bothering to use the stakes, but if I did, there is a loop at each end for them.
In the last picture, you can see it didn’t take long for it to get jumped on! I straightened it out but, if it continues to be an issue, I’ll move it under the floating shelf.
Hopefully, this will attract the more feral cats into staying in the inner yard more, instead of disappearing somewhere in the outer yard they’ve found nests in.
It was still pretty nice out, so I got another quick project done, in the water bowl house. I started off by emptying it of everything but the pieces of rigid insulation, and getting some measurements. I then went through our pile of scrap wood that my brother gave me when they were bringing all their stuff out here after selling their property, to find something I could cut to the right length for the sides, and something I could use for a shelf board.
This is how it turned out.
I’d found a 2×4 long enough to cut two support pieces out of, and the shelf board is an actual Melamine covered shelf; the longest of the ones my brother passed on to me. It was actually a smidge too long to fit between the true-to-size 2x4s forming the frame in the back of the shelter, so I shaved off the width and length of a blade on each end with my miter saw. That was just enough for what was now the back of the board to fit between the frame. I did not bother to secure the board to the supports, though, so we can take it out as needed.
Then I added a couple of screws to that loose board in the wall. This structure is mostly nailed together and, for some reason, that corner keeps getting knocked loose. That will no longer happen!
In the second picture, everything is put back in again. The cats really love that cardboard box, so I put it back, too.
Eventually, I want to get another shelf board that is long enough to reach from wall to wall and add it in front of the board that’s there now. We do have some scrap pieces of plywood that could be cut to fit, but it’s thinner and would bow under the weight of cats without some sort of support in the middle. For now, the cat beds in the back have a little more shelter, the cats can sit on the shelf above – and the box will no longer be crushed by cats getting on top of it! We might even be able to pop open that cat cave again, so they can shelter inside it again.
I think the cats will like their new perch.
Yeah. I’m a suck for the cats.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 