I Visit A Cat House

Awright, calm down, you know what I mean.

Charlie and I went over to visit our #2 daughter and her husband and our granddaughter and our grandkitties. #2 Daughter loves cats, but she also loves rabbits, birds, chipmunks and squirrels, and she lives all too close to a busy road. Still, she hates to keep the cats cooped up indoors when they love nature so much.

Her solution: a wire mesh cat house. She’s very handy with a hammer, and she, her husband, and Charlie constructed this palace.

It has a door with a latch, so she can take food and water to them, even though they have food and water in the house. But they might want some food and water outside. It totally makes sense to me.

It has mesh across the top, because the hawks grow BIG around here. It has a tile floor, because obviously.

And here’s the cool part: It has a passageway connecting it to the house with a cat flap on one end and a ramp down from the passageway to the ground at the other end. It’s like a Chuck E. Cheese for kittehs.

The tiles don’t have grout between them, the better to drain when it rains, and plants are sprouting in the cracks, which gives the kitties something to eat and barf back up in the house, which is always such a treat for them.

It’s ingenious! The cats have all the joy of watching birds and other critters, but they’re safe from traffic, dogs, other cats, and all the various dangers attendant to being a cat.

Do they like it? What do you think?

Meanwhile, I finished writing “Blood of Mermayds” and I’m letting it cool for a bit before rewriting, and I pretty well finished a horror flash fiction story today. Our 11-year-old grandson, who is also a writer, read it and said, “That was really good! Creepy!” So that’s two thumbs-up for me. πŸ™‚

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character does something for his or her pets that someone else considers extravagant.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

You may also like...

One thought on “I Visit A Cat House

  1. Jane

    May 3, 2012 at 8:16am

    Hi. This cat shack looks great! I have ALWAYS wanted a special house for my outdoor kitties. They’ve all been Alley Cat Advocated (fixed, ear-tipped, and semi-vaccinated). They have a relatively safe place to live, too, and I’ve built and appropriated many little houses for them to sleep in, etc. But a big, lovely, safe playground would be sooo super. So, how big do you think a 15-cat house should be???

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
    • Author

      Marian Allen

      May 3, 2012 at 8:38am

      Jane, let’s see…. 15 cats…. I think you’d do it if you took all the walls off your house and replaced them with chicken wire, and you moved into one of the little houses in the yard. Yeah, that ought to do it. πŸ˜‰

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply
      • Jane

        May 4, 2012 at 10:44am

        @Marian Allen
        Good suggestion. I’ve also been considering just throwing up chicken wire over the whole backyard.

        P.S. If all the cats out + all the cats in were added up, there’d be over 20, so my house might not be big enough.

        Permalink  ⋅ Reply
        • Author

          Marian Allen

          May 4, 2012 at 11:42am

          You’re doing a wonderful service! Lure the feral cats to semi-tameness, trap ’em and de-reproductionize ’em, and put ’em back into the gene pool. They live, and the population of feral cats goes down.

          Besides, the cats you attend are all sweeties! πŸ™‚

          Permalink  ⋅ Reply
  2. Dani G.

    May 7, 2012 at 10:58am

    I have the same cat haven/heaven situation, but fortunately have a large barn, pump house, people house, and garage/studio for my ten. This is totally cool though, Marian! Hubbo thinks there should be a roof on the felistrian overpass though. Snort! Have you seen the book, The Cat’s House by Bob Walker? The cover says it all.

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
    • Author

      Marian Allen

      May 7, 2012 at 4:02pm

      Woah! Yeah, you’re right about that book. I think even #2 daughter would consider that over the top. lol!

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply

Leave a Reply, If You Ple-az

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.