I know, I know. We’ve heard it before … “You do know your animals are spoiled, right?” or “Man, if I were an animal, I sure hope I’d get to live at your place!”
But when you have a barn cat (best dog we have, by the way), and she doesn’t even have a barn, where’s a respectable mouser supposed to go?
When Two Socks adopted us two years ago, we needed to find a safe place for her to sleep. We had a small utility table that was one of hubby’s first wood-working projects. We also had some leftover pieces of siding, so we enclosed the bottom shelf and put a tote inside with some paper shreds and some straw. And Two Socks took up residence right outside the back door. As the weather turned colder, we upgraded her “bed” to a huge dog crate we had on top of the table with a dog bed and some hay inside. She made a nice little nest. Problem was, with all the openings in the dog crate, it was susceptible to the weather – especially rain. So naturally we covered it with a tarp. That worked for over a year.
Leading up to the recent, and very unusual, really cold snap we had last month, hubby wanted to build something a little more weather-proof for our faithful girl (aka the Pasture Manager).
We still used the big dog crate with the bed inside, but we enclosed it in her very own cedar-sided kitten fort. A barn kitty’s gotta have a barn, right? Even if it’s a mini-barn.
Oh, and that box on the “lower level” with the paper shreds? Yeah, that’s right … the chickens have taken it over as the exclusive, private nest they can sneak off to. So now we have to check the nests in the coop and the “nest” in the old kitten bed in the backyard for eggs each day. Guess I shouldn’t complain … at least they’re not laying them all over in random places!
Until next time, worms rocks, bees rule and chickens are my Zen.
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Pasture Deficit Disorder: Because Life in a Pasture is the Only Cure
