Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Earning my Crazy Cat Lady Status

Hi Guys,

Well, the past few weeks have been interesting and busy. I had my bike fitting/physical therapy appointment, and it was very interesting indeed. I'll write more about that saga later as it's still unfolding, but suffice it to say, my hip and knee problems turned out not to be hip and knee related after all. Turns out I have a lower back problem. Details in a future post...

But for the moment, I wanted to share with you my latest Crazy Cat Lady obsession....

It's the Kitty Cam! (For some reason that I don't understand, I had to click the play icon twice to get the video to play.)


Since there haven't been any more incidents with the (actual) crazy lady down the street, I decided to re-purpose one of my security cameras in order to better keep tabs on my little feral friend.

Try as I might, I was unable to get him to relocate from his original spot in the little un-insulated house that I initially put together for him under the rose bush next to my front porch.


I built a nice insulated house for him, and set it up on the covered back patio with a heating pad in it and everything, but I could never get him to use it. Turns out the back porch is right in the path of the neighborhood raccoons, so that might explain his reluctance to hang out there. Here's one of the little fellows truckin' it across the back yard.


I figured the raccoons were probably attracted by the bird and squirrel food that was all over the place, so I crafted a new system for feeding the squirrels and birds which keeps the food from getting spilled all over the ground. Basically I put the food in some litter boxes so they can get at it, but don't scatter it all over the place like they did with the bird and squirrel feeders. This means I can easily take the leftover food into the garage at night, and this has cut down on our raccoon visitors immensely.

But alas, my little feral friend still wouldn't go near the house on the back patio, and when the neighbor's cat (who is a bit of a pill) started showing interest in it, I decided it was probably best to just punt and focus instead on trying to make some improvements to the house that he does like.

The first thing I did was to put a big piece of plywood sticking out over the edge of the porch to make the area a bit more sheltered by giving the area a "roof." I secured it by setting three large heavy cinder blocks on the part that's on the porch so it can't cantilever over the edge.



Next, I stuffed some straw behind the house, and on the side that butts up against the concrete to insulate it from the cold. Then, I put a flat piece of wood on top of the house, and on top of that I put a square section of a bale of straw, with some Styrofoam and a few bricks on top of the straw to secure it. Finally, I piled up another section of straw on the exposed side of the house, and wrapped some bird netting around it, tucking it under the house to keep it in place.

He happily slept there during our first snow storm of the year, but I still worried that he was cold, so yesterday, with another storm on the way, I managed to get the heating pad from the house he wouldn't use to fit inside of this house.

I worried all last night because he got a little spooked by my disrupting his space and wouldn't actually go back in the house, sleeping in the straw in front of it instead. But then the snow started and voila!


I will sleep much better tonight knowing that he's warm and dry.

So that's the crazy cat lady report. Blogger seems to be having some sort of an issue displaying photos and videos, so I hope you can see my Kitty Cam videos! If not, I guess you'll just have to use your imagination.