Oh Hai! It Must Be Time for Dinner.
What’s taking so long in there?
Another Tip on Building and Cleaning Out Feral Cat Shelters
Every year I go around the neighborhood and clean out the outdoor cat houses that I’ve put out for the colony cats. I can’t afford to build wood shelters for all the colonies, so I use Rubbermaid bins. They’re cost-effective, easy to transport, and most importantly, they keep the cats warm.
There’s no single “right” way to build cat shelters, but as I’m cleaning them out this year I realized I prefer the two-bin shelter with pink insulation in-between model. The insulation gets filthy and you have to replace it every year if the cat is sitting on it. That’s added expense to buy more insulation, and time to measure and cut it out again every year.
If the cat sits on the straw placed directly in the bin, you just throw the old straw out, hose down the bin, and add fresh straw.
Check out this photo of a cat house I’m currently cleaning. You can see the insulation in-between the bins is still as good as new, while the piece that was inside that the cats sat on is dirty, scratched up, and needs to be thrown out.
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Thank you for Your Continued Support and Partying With Us!
“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.”
–Albert Schweitzer
This past weekend we hosted our annual party for our friends including food, drinks and performances in our Caffeinated Recordings studio downstairs. Everyone that comes to these parties contributes in some way and I’d like to thank all of them for making it even more fun every year.
This year I also wanted to highlight TNR and outdoor cat colony management and our friends’ generosity, interest and compassion really inspired me.
Lots of people saw the cats in my yard that night and were really interested in their cat houses and how they were cared for. For some reason the cats decided to stay late this year and show off. I’m thrilled that more and more people are learning about TNR and accepting that it is the most humane, effective way to care for the colony cats and ultimately reduce the outdoor cat population overall.
One Wing Low performed that night and it turned out that their drummer knew Erica, the TNR staff person at Tree House Humane Society, because she was currently fostering four kittens from a local TNR project. They had no idea they were going to end up at the same party!
People gave money online and in person, and brought supplies for the cats, including food, medicine and materials for the cat houses.
I’d like to thank our motley crew of musicians and artists for their donations, including, Mark from Cmn ineed ur hlp, Christy and John from Nonagon, Lisa, Bruno and Jovanka, Shepy/Jay, Liz, and Erica. Also, thank you Dorota, for your online donation! I’d like to meet you someday.
I’m embarrassed because I know I’m missing some people, but please give me a break or a private message to remind me – the party went on until 5am!
Mooha, the studio cat.
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Feral Cats are Opportunistic Feeders
Dice is done with breakfast and lounging on the catio in my yard. I love his lopsided ears! He could care less about the little bird eating amaranth seeds a few feet away. Feral cats are opportunistic feeders – they will eat whatever food is easiest to find. And the bird doesn’t seem very concerned about him either.
Can you see the little bird in the lower right-hand corner?
Moral of the story? Hunting for food is for the birds. Dice prefers his meals served to him on a plate.
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Feral Feeding Station Keeps Cats Dry
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow will keep Dice and Bouncy Bear from lining up at their outdoor cat feeding station right on schedule.
Maybe they’ll hang out together in the chiminea cat house next.
Funny Face and Bouncy Bear share.
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Update on Kitty Farrell, the New Tripod Cat
Kitty Farrell, the outdoor TNR’d cat from the Sprockets Colony that was injured, is now fully recovered from her hind leg amputation and out of her crate. She has access to a room in her caregiver’s home, and is learning how to walk on three legs.
She’s got her own YouTube channel that you can subscribe to.
Here is Kitty Farrell exploring her new world.
And here she is thoroughly enjoying just being a cat who was given a well deserved second chance.
When a Colony Cat Gets Adopted from Another Colony
This year I’ve had several cats visit other colony caregivers for food and shelter. Sometimes they stay to establish new colonies, and sometimes they get adopted, like Babalu and Star.
Robert F. Cattedy first showed up in my yard this past June. He was a bold and beautiful tabby, and looked a lot like my cat Mowpa. Mowpa died this past winter and I miss him terribly. I thought for sure I was going to adopted Robbie into my home because he seemed friendly.
- Robert F. Cattedy takes over my yard and pays no attention to Dice.
I trapped Robbie right away in a humane Tru-catch trap.
He acted fierce and feral and wouldn’t look at me, so I took him for his TNR spa treatment at the clinic.
He never seemed to calm down during his recovery, so I decided to return him outside. He was not destined to be adopted into my home after all.
Robbie came back to visit a few times, but he never let me near him. The James’ Gang Colony cats in my yard did not seem willing to accept him. They had a few stand-offs.
- Funny Face faces off with Robbie.
Eventually Robbie stopped visiting.
About a month ago I got an email from another neighbor who told me about a cat visiting her yard.
It turns out it was Robert F. Cattedy! I was familiar with her block because I had seen orange cats over there and named her alley the Ginger Colony. She is feeding him, providing him with outdoor shelter, and named him Newt. He is also going in and out of her home. She said he is welcome to stay indoors permanently if he chooses to do so. I knew he was somewhat friendly, and am happy to see he found a home more fitting for him.
This also shows how important it is to network with other neighbors. The cats are fed in other people’s yards, and it’s great to know they are cared for by the whole community. That is part of a successful TNR program.
Dawn says: Can you get Feedburner or something so I can subscribe to get new updates in my email? I dont want to miss any posts, thank you : )
Currently we are updating our blog and will look into doing this as well. Thanks so much for your interest!
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Thank You for Your Support & Donations to Help Colony Cats!
A feral cat colony caregiver surprised me this week by signing up for scheduled monthly donations for the cats through Paypal.
THANK YOU! If you are interested in donating, there is a Paypal link on the right hand side of this page.
All donations are used to trap-neuter-return and continue to care for the colony cats by providing them food, shelter and medical care when needed. My current project is trying to finish TNR for the Cell Phones Colony. I am hoping they will come out to the baited Tru-Catch traps more readily now that it’s getting colder outside. People tend to forget to feed cats outside during winter because they are staying out of the cold. And the cats are hungrier than ever during these months.
This is how I managed to TNR the Eleanor Rigby Colony. Even during a snowstorm, the cats came out immediately to check out the traps baited with canned fish in oil.
Barbs says: Even $10 a month, while it seems like a pittance, can go a long way. I’ve been looking at “frugal” ways to entice and maintain the ferals, and things like tuna in oil, or sardines, or even the salmon cat food from Aldi, at under $.40 a can, can go a long way, for either trapping or caretaking of TNR ferals. In a perfect world, ALL the kitties would have fresh fish every day! But if the cheap stuff isn’t perfect, it will keep them alive, and their tummies filled. We do the best we can…
If you “think globally, act locally”, you can see that supporting your local TNR folks is a good thing to do!
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Chicago Artists Commissioned to Make Outdoor Cat Houses
TATIC, the Terraformer Advancement of Interspecific Communication, opened its doors to the public over the weekend to view outdoor cat houses made by Chicago artists.
We talked to one of the artists and asked what led to this project, and if he sees cats outside. He said there are a few cats in the area that have already visited the garden, and one of the cats goes into his apartment. We talked about TNR, trap-neuter-return, and he said Throop St Ferals was there earlier and has offered their help. Throop St Ferals happens to do TNR in Bridgeport within blocks from TATIC so this is perfect.
It was interesting to me that TATIC made the connection of the cats needing shelters first. Most people start feeding the cats, then want to fix them when the population increases, and then move on to building shelters for them. I can appreciate this roundabout way of trying to learn how to help the cats because I never fed cats initially in my yard either. I rented my first humane trap to try to get a sick cat that would not let me near her otherwise and never stopped trapping since then.
The pyramid cat house was my favorite. It is fully insulated – it just needs a floor added and straw stuffed inside.
They also had other feral cat shelters and cat-themed projects throughout the empty lot.
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- Cat Houses
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- Cat Church
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- Cat Graphics
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- Cat Sculpture
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Monorail Cats In My Yard
When we let our indoor pet cats out to explore the garden, we put up a screened fence to keep them from leaving the yard.
But it doesn’t stop the outdoor colony cats from coming into my yard. Bouncy Bear and Dice line up like monorail cats.
Vanessa, yeah, if the styrofoam pieces you use are just squares cut out and dropped in, propped up by straw, this will happen. We cut our pieces using a template so that the 5 pieces are fitted perfectly to the shape of the bin, and inserted so tightly that they cannot fall over, even with no straw in the bin. 🙂 (shameless plug for Tree House brand shelters here!)
I moved that piece for the photo – that was the “floor” used as extra insulation, not propped up. The cats scratch the insulation and it also obviously gets filthy from them. You can hose down the bins because they’re plastic, not the insulation. There’s no right or wrong way, I’m just freshening up a lot of bins and have found this way saves time for me.