Following up on my 09-17-11 post regarding helping a feral cat survive the upcoming winter

I have been working for some time now to try to get the feral cat (stray cat is probably a better descriptive term) who has adopted us to come inside the house. So far it hasn’t worked. The stray will let me and my wife to pet it now, but it will not allow either of us us to pick it up and it simply will come inside the house voluntarily. And to be honest, even if it did want to come in, there just isn’t room for it: our house is very tiny and we already have two extremely large indoor cats. Facing these facts, I deicded that I needed to get to work on figuring out what I could do to help the cat survive the winter outside.

As I stated in the aforementioned post, I had been researching affordable and simple shelters that I might be able to construct and place somewhere in the backyard where the cat would be willing to use it. After thinking about it for a while, and looking at my available time and funds, I decided on a course of action regarding constructing a shelter. Below are the details regarding my line of thought and actions on this.

_________________________________________________

The firs thing I did was to take a long look at exactly where might be the best location in my backyard to place a shelter. The location that made the most sense to me involved placing the shelter close to, or somehow attached to, the low wooden deck that’s directly outside our back door. A previous outdoor/indoor cat we had—as well as other cats from the neighborhood—have used the underside of this 16′ by 16′ deck for shelter. Although this stray primarily hangs out in our front yard, I’ve seen it come out from underneath the deck on occasion. A shelter involving the deck made sense.

I considered constructing a storage tub shelter (the type mentioned in my previous post) and putting it just to the “side” of the deck, so the cat would have quite a bit of room with shelter over its head as it went in and out of the tub-shelter. This idea made sense, but I still wasn’t completely happy with it.

I continued to think about it and eventually asked myself the question, “Why didn’t I explore setting up a shelter that was all the way under the deck?” I went to the corner of the deck that was most sheltered from the elements, and I pried up several of the deck-boards to see if there would be a way to fit a tub-shelter into the space under the deck. Fortunately, the space between the joists was just wide enough, and with very little digging, the space was just deep enough—the tub-shelter slipped right in!

I decided that this would be the direction I went in and I set about constructing the shelter.

I started with a generic 18-gallon storage tub. Using a jigsaw, I cut an entrance/exit hole for big enough for the cat. [I should stop and note here that the idea was for this to be a shelter for a "single" cat. If a person has more than one stray to shelter/care for, I would recommend using a bigger tub.]

Then using some dense foam packing material I recovered from a vacuum cleaner we had recently purchased, I lined the bottom of the tub—the idea being that this would provide a layer of insulation from the cold plastic tub which would be sitting on the cold ground. I duct-taped the layer of foam to the inside of the tub.

Next I spread a layer of straw on the foam packing material. The straw came from a local Wal-Mart. I found it with the Halloween/Fall decorating materials. The straw came in small, decorative bales, and cost about $4.00 a bale.

After putting the layer of straw down, I put another, larger/taller layer of the foam packing material down. I duct-taped this layer to the sides—higher this time—of the tub.

Then I spread another layer of straw on the inside of the tub. And I duct-taped the rough edges of the doorway.

At this point I fitted the tub-shelter into the space beneath the deck—again, it fit perfectly! I took the remaining straw—a bale and a half at this point—and spread it around the outside of the tub-shelter to provide some additional insulation, and an area for the cat to lie on outside of the shelter.

I covered the shelter with the deck-boards. I did not nail the boards down at this point—no rain was in the forecast for a few days and I wanted to check the shelter for use before semi-permanently covering it.

After four days, I lifted the deck-boards up to see if the cat was using the shelter and/or area around it. Success! Right outside the entrance to the shelter, there was an indentation in the straw just the size of a nestled-down cat! I lifted the tub’s lid to take a look to see if there was any evidence that the cat had been inside the shelter, but there was none. However, I’m very optimistic that if the cat was willing to “nest” in the straw that’s immediately outside the shelter’s entrance, then it’s extremely likely that the cat will enter and use the shelter once it becomes a little cooler outdoors.

Having learned what I needed to about whether or not the cat would make use of the shelter, I then replaced the deck-boards and covered the area with a plastic tarp I had purchased at Harbor Freight Tools. To hold the tarp down over the winter, I covered it with a whole bunch of sticks and small limbs that had fallen in the yard after recent storms (they were sitting around on the deck anyway—might as well make good use of them). The shelter and area around it was now ready to use—and it was sheltered from rain, ice, and snow as it possibly could be!

_________________________________________________

A couple of final things to note:

A bonus for both the cat and the shelter, is the fact that the dryer vent exits the house less than two feet away from where the shelter is located. The vent shoots warm air down, directly into the area where the shelter is located under the deck. This will help keep the area warm for a least a portion of every day (we do a lot of laundry). [Note: The dryer vent exits the house in a very awkward position: The middle of the vent is right in the middle of the deck-boards. During the construstion process I’ve taken pains to keep the vent from being blocked from above, but in the event that this happens due to falling leaves and/or accumulation of snow, it will be able to vent air from below the deck-board line, so everything should be safe.]

A few days after completing the shelter, I was in our front yard feeding the stray. Stuck to its side was a small piece of straw! I was thrilled to have additional evidence that the cat was using the shelter! (I already knew the cat was aware of my work on the shelter, because I caught it checking out the “hole” in the deck when I removed the deck-boards—it had even laid down and taken a quick nap by the construction area while I was taking a break!)

I’ll continue to try to get the cat to come inside for the winter, but based on our history with it, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. To end I’ll say that I’m convinced that I have done the best I can for it by creating this winter shelter.