Kitty, our barn cat, has been with us for 2 and a half years! In April of 2014, we started finding cat scat on the property and then flashes of a spooked gray cat that would run away if she saw you. I started putting food and water out and after a few weeks of her doing recon on us, she popped her head out from under our work shed and gave me a 'meow'. She decided we didn't look all that bad and was curious of all the fun looking things we were doing on the property at that time (building a catio for Nova & Naveen as well as building a coop and run for our first chickens).
Kitty was a wild looking skinny cat that I kept feeding and watering. She very much needed to take her time warming up to us. During monsoon, we put a cat door into our work shed where she could quickly escape the rain, and go hide under a table in there. When winter rolled around, Kitty spent a very difficult night on a heating blanket outside and I knew it was time we needed to come up with a long term plan.
The following night we brought her inside the house for the cold winter night. We closed her off in a room that we had been using for storage. She had food, water, a warm bed, and a litter box and a quiet place away from the dogs. During these past few months, we realized Sarge isn't quiet used to cats. He would react to seeing Kitty waiting at the door outside and try to pounce at her through the glass door. Pepe & Zoey are total pros with felines. We've been slowly working with Sarge on his Kitty reactivity and we've definitely made a lot of improvement but not where I would like to be, and maybe never will get to that point.
Fast forward to now, September 2016... Kitty still has 'her room' that we're currently in the process of remodeling. At dusk every day, she waits at the backdoor or the front door, waiting to come in for the night. In the mornings she goes back outside but she NEVER strays far. If we're outside working, she is either right there with us, or watching us from somewhere safe if we're mowing or weed wacking. She can scale a tree to get up on the roof at one end of the house, then do some kitty parkour and jump down on the opposite end. Because of the amount of skill she has rapidly climbing trees and walls, I don't worry about her getting away from any daytime predators. We don't have many that come through, the occasional lone coyote which always passes through so quick (They don't even want to stick around to check out our flock).
We often bring Kitty inside for a mid-day nap but sometimes she likes to stay outside for her naps and we find her on a patio chair, in the shed, on a deck storage box, and recently ... in an old planter.
I wanted to give her something more cozy, just for her, that wasn't full of dirt! I had 2 large 22" plastic planters that I got on sale that I never got around to using. I ended up using them as a quick table when I was cutting some plywood and cut through the lips of both planters. Whoops. When I spotted Kitty napping in the planter, a brain light bulb turned on in my head!
I pulled the plastic planters out of the shed, took a few retaining wall blocks and the wheels in my kept turning.
I ran out to Home Depot to pick up some small 2'x2' plywood and cut a platform that would rest evenly on the blocks.
Now that I knew this was going to work, I painted and glazed the planters, bought a memory foam square (2" thick), some pretty material and a zipper.
I got a great deal at Hobby Lobby - I found this fabric hiding under a bunch of others and score, it was half off! I bought extra fabric since I liked it so much. I used their 40% off coupon on the memory foam which came out to only $6!
I cut the memory foam to the size of the wood platform, 18", and then proceeded to sew a cover (by hand!) A lot of people make cheap pet beds out of fleece but I hate the static properties of fleece and how dog and cat hair never fully comes off of it, so I decided on a different material and to sew a zipper on it so I could take it off and wash it. I don't have a sewing machine, nor know how to use one, so this was all done by hand.
And tada! It turned out great!
Now I just have to entice Kitty enough to start using it!
And after a week or so ... she loves it!
She really seems to appreciate that I sunk the cushion. She feels like she is 'hiding' inside the planter! :)
She really seems to appreciate that I sunk the cushion. She feels like she is 'hiding' inside the planter! :)
