November 26, 2010

It's good to be a cat!

When my little Jessie girl passed away, I decided any new kitten needed to be a mostly indoor kitty. Jessie never went beyond my backyard and the orange cat limits himself to the front porch and the backyard but a young frisky cat might want to roam.

Because I don't like the idea of completely indoor cats (plus the orange cat would probably have a meltdown if I tried to keep him in completely), I decided to get a cat enclosure.

So I did some research and weighed some options. There's a couple of companies that do cat enclosures around (or if you're handier than me you could probably build one yourself). I however, went with the expert version. A process which has involved me completely digging out my garden beds, experimenting with bodgy paving and doing a fair bit of prep work.

Today, Dale from Catnip came to install the cat palace. Catnip do wire enclosures (there are other companies that do netting type things but I don't really have anything to enclose with netting. The good thing about Catnip, is the enclosures can be disassembled and move with me and they can also be extended later on down the track.

This way, the orange cat (and the fuzzy kitten when he arrives) will get fresh air and sunshine (and grass to nibble on once I plant some in pots) plus they can be up high (which the orange cat hasn't been able to do for a few years due to his arthritic knees). I'm sure there will be a bit of an adjustment on his part, and the cunning plan is to occasionally let him go out if he wants while keeping the fuzz ball in but it's safer for both of the and the pigeon and sparrow population will be safe (though as I've said before, any bird that gets caught by an old athriticky cat whose hunting technique involves meowing loudly probably is better out of the gene pool).

And here is the end result (and Tabasco's opinion so far in the vid). Excuse the garden rubbish, I'm still cleaning up.









3 comments:

Tez Miller said...

Yay, he gets to be almost as tall as the house! :-)

M.J. said...

Yes, he used to get up on the roof and loved it but can't manage that any more. He looked very happy when he first got up high in the cat palace!

Robyn Enlund said...

look at that adventurous orange thing! i'm so proud of him! you can obviously teach an old CAT new tricks!