litter box improvements

The list of home improvement projects is long. It seems I always have several projects going at the same time. The current big ongoing project is the mudroom, it's slowly coming together, another year or two and it'll be done. I've noticed that cat-related projects always seem to trump the non-cat related ones and get done first.

I hate litter box dust. It goes everywhere and is impossible to clean. I have been dreaming of a simple system that would filter out the dust before it coated everything. The other day I stumbled on a little tabletop HEPA air filter at Goodwill for $7.00 (sells new for $39 at Amazon) - it was the perfect thing for the job. I especially like that it's relatively quiet on the low setting and it also filters out odors.

Since dust is only stirred up when the litter box is being used or scooped, I wanted the filter to only activate at those times and not run constantly. This was easily achieved using a wireless motion activated sensor.

The biggest part of this job was installing an electrical outlet in the bathroom closet. Then it was matter of hooking everything up. Now that everything is setup, it works perfect - just as I had hoped! The sensor is located such that when a kitty steps near one of the litter boxes, the motion sensor detects movement and turns on the filter. I can adjust the amount of time the filter stays on, currently it is set to run for 5 minutes after the cat leaves.

Another exciting improvement in the litter box department is that stainless steel bin you see between the two litter boxes in the picture. That little bin serves as a poop and pee depository. Prior to this unit, the kitchen trash can received what was scooped from the litter boxes. The problem was that trash can wasn't covered and didn't always get emptied right away - can you say STINKY! STINKY!!

There are products available for disposing of used litter, such as the Litter Locker, but I wasn't excited to be forced into buying their special (and expensive) bags. I also prefer to have the opening of the container be big enough that I can tap the scoop against the side to dislodge any sticky chunks, the Little Locker opening is rather small and geared for using the plastic scoop provided. I swear by my heavy duty metal DuraScoop Cat Litter Scoop - I'm never going back to plastic!

We decided to go with the simplehuman Extra Large Stainless Steel Slim Food Canister. It's meant for storing food so it has a nice rubber seal and the inside bucket is removable for easy cleaning. The inner bucket also makes it easy to place and hold a plastic bag for easy disposal. The only negative so far is the handle is too small for carrying it comfortably. I've used it for a week now and all in all, it's a big improvement over the stinky trash can!

feral fun

It's 12:15am, I need to be sleeping, but I can't peel myself away from the window.

Oliver and two of his family members are enjoying the yard. It's the first warmer night we have had this winter. One of the ferals hunted a sizable rodent and is now feasting in the middle of the yard. The playful one, AKA Mama Kitty, is batting around the fake mousie I put out earlier today. Occasionally he takes a break from the mousie and zooms around the yard, just like the inside kitties do.

Oliver is parked in the yard, staring at me. He's wanting me to make the red dot appear so he can chase it around the yard, something he loves to do.

Mama Kitty has now taken the mousie into the Dining Hall and is batting it around inside. Just how does a feral cat know that fake mousies are for batting around?! This is the third fake mousie, I don't know what happened to the previous two. The yard is big, and Mama Kitty likes to stage creative deaths for his mousies.

I should be sleeping, I've got to get up early for work tomorrow, but watching Mama Kitty roll around in the yard is mesmerizing. So far tonight, I have only seen three cats in one place at a time. I keep looking for the fourth.

Oliver remains steadfast, watching me. The hunter kitty continues to devour it's fresh kill.

Mama Kitty chased the red dot for the first time this evening. He's lightening fast. I try to stop the red dot on a toy or leaf, so when they pounce on it they actually land on something solid.

I'm wondering if there will be a rodent carcass waiting for me in the yard come daylight, if so, it will be the first I've noticed. Hopefully, hunter kitty practices 'leave no trace hunting' and cleans up after himself.

Observing the ferals is giving me a sense of their personalities. I really like Mama Kitty, he's playful, silly and inquisitive. Hunter kitty seems serious and focused. Oliver is easy going and playful as usual. He always seems happy to share his toys, food and housing with his family.

Hunter kitty is chasing the red dot now, while Oliver looks on. The speed at which these cats run astounds me.

Having a feral family in my yard is like having a wild safari just outside my door. I'll take watching the ferals over television any day.

This could go on all night, except I need to sleep! Good night delightful outside kitties.

changing foods

Buddy is very particular about his food. If he doesn't like it, he's not eating it, regardless of how hungry he might be. He's very stubborn! I have tried all sorts of healthy wet and dry foods, but he refuses. The only food he consistently gobbles down is junk food! But not just any junk food he insists on Friskies Shreds. He also likes Fancy Feast, Grilled style but he won't touch the Pate!

I don't like giving him a consistent diet of junk, but I'm not sure what else to do. When he's on a hunger strike, he never gives in.

The next most picky eater in the clan is Oliver. He turns up his nose at Friskies Shreds and the Fancy Feast Pate style. He'll only eat a few select flavors of the Fancy Feast Grilled style. He's also rather choosy on what dry nuggets he'll eat. I suppose he's not a starving stray anymore!

Meanwhile, I've been working on converting the indoor cats (except Buddy) to dry grain-free (Taste of the Wild). After a few weeks of mixing the old food with the new, the kitties have taken to it just fine. However, the litter box tells a different tale. Several of the cats have been having fairly loose poops since the conversion.

In the past, when I switched Theo's food he had some nasty diarrhea for quite a long time. After much medical testing, it was decided to give him a regular fiber supplement, which helped. Since it worked well then, I have since restarted that fiber and again it appears to be helping him. But with other cats showing some poop-consistency problems, I'm wondering what to do. I don't really want to switch back to the old food, but at least it agreed with their innards. 

Has anyone else out there had troubles converting over to grain-free? I would love to hear what you did to solve the problems?

In other non-poop related news... last weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing a real Battlestar Galactica Viper Mark II up close! I was dying to hop inside and fly away.

The Viper was at the Battlestar Galactica exhibit at the Experience Music Project, in Seattle. They had two full-sized Vipers (Mark II and Mark VII) from the show, a full-sized Cylon Raider and tons of other props and costumes. The level of detail in these items is absolutely remarkable.

In June, another sci-fi exhibit opens at the EMP which will feature an Imperial Dalek from Doctor Who, Captain Kirk's command chair from Star Trek and lots of other great props from other classic sci-fi movies and TV. Certainly something to look forward to!

Sticky Paws revisited

It was two years ago yesterday, when I first reviewed Sticky Paws, a product that is intended to deter cats from getting on or scratching surfaces. My first few attempts at using this product were complete fails. None of the indoor cats were deterred, they had no problems walking on a sticky surface. They even turned it into a toy!

Since then, the remaining product has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust. It occurred to me last night that maybe this product would have an effect on Oliver. I've been wanting to deter him from jumping up in the window and getting Buddy all stirred up. So, last night, I got my Sticky Paws, went out and applied two strips to the outside window sill. Of course, as I was doing this, Oliver was at my feet in the yard. Upon completing this task, I made my way back inside.

Once back in the house, I was greeted with the shrieks and snarls of Buddy trying to attack Oliver through the window. Oliver didn't waste any time proving to me what a completely worthless product Sticky Paws is. Maybe others have had positive experiences with Sticky Paws, but thus far all six of my cats have not been deterred in the least by stepping on a sticky surface. Time for me to repurpose the double sided tape into something that is actually useful.

Oliver, antagonizing Buddy while standing on the Sticky Paws strips

---

My local newspaper published a front page article in yesterday's paper on the grassroots Community Cat Coalition, the TNR group that I have recently connected with. Nancy, my TNR mentor, is featured in the story. There's also an unnamed reference to Oliver and his family!

TNR on the front page, I think that's pretty awesome! I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the comments people left on the news article site are actually supportive. I hardly ever read what people have to say in those comments anymore because they are usually overly negative and antagonistic.

Theo Thankful Thursday

All too often I look back on prior decisions and second guess myself. "What if...?" "If only I had..." If I don't intentionally intervene, these statements can roll around and around in my mind causing me great grief.

My hasty decision to fly a desperate, love- and food-starved Theo home from rural Indiana after only knowing him for a few days wasn't one of those decisions. Each day Theo is in my life, I rejoice knowing I made an excellent choice. He's such a wonderful cat and a great delight in my world.

Sept 2011

Every cat is different and each have their little rituals. One of the many things I love about Theo is our morning routine. After my morning bath, as I am getting dressed for the day, Theo silently sneaks up the stairs. With one instant burst of energy he flies around the corner of the stairs, springboards from the corner of the bed right onto my left shoulder. He's so fast, that by the time I figure out what's going on all I see is a flying Theo coming right at me!  I can't help but laugh and delight in his silly and loving nature.

Once he's secure on my shoulder, he proceeds to melt into me as he soaks up the loves, usually to the point of drooling! He so loves doing this and I absolutely love sharing this precious moment with him. It's such a delightful way to start each day. It's often in this moment that I give thanks for the gift of sharing my life with the amazing Theo.

Jan 2012

No regrets, only gratefulness.

return of the Family

Happy news! For the first time since I TNR'ed Oliver's family, I finally saw all of them together again! Yahooo!!!! It was Sunday night family night in the yard, because they were all out there for an hour or so eating, playing and visiting. It was so delightful to see them all, I was really starting to worry that one of them didn't make it or decided to find a different yard to hang out in. I love seeing Oliver enjoying the company of his family. He seems to love hanging out with them or play chase and pounce.

I have put out a bunch of different toys for Oliver and his family to enjoy. A few mice, a rattle ball and a crinkle ball. All of these toys migrate all around the yard and can be quite a challenge to find again! Seeing them play with the toys is a delight. 

The kitty with the short tail and white blaze on it's chest (formerly known as Mama Kitty) has a blast playing with a mousie. It tosses it in the air and then pounces on it and rolls around while playing with it. I love seeing that kitty so relaxed and enjoying itself in my yard. I could watch it play for hours! I really wanted to get some pictures of it rolling around and playing to share, but I didn't want to risk scaring them off.

Meanwhile, Oliver has taken well to being a porch kitty. I went looking for  a nice soft fleece kitty bed for him that would work well with his heating pad, but I couldn't find just the right one. So, I bought him a temporary soft kitty bed to enjoy, until I make him a custom bed out of the fleece that a friend donated.

I think Oliver likes his new bed!

Since he started living on the porch, I have noticed a shift in Oliver's clingyness. He used to glob onto me every time I went outside but now he's starting to trust that I'm not going to abandon him. Now when I walk by he may only lift his head up to acknowledge my presence. Although yesterday, he rolled over and asked to have his tummy rubbed. If I haven't been out in a while, he still gets up and demands requests some snuggle time.

cooperative TNR experience

Today I had the pleasure of assisting with a cooperative TNR event, in Gold Bar, Washington, which is an old mining town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Mining towns have a history of being kind of rough-and-tumble. Well, even though Gold Bar probably hasn't had any active mining in nearly forever, it hasn't lost it hard edge.

The trapping site consisted of a sizable piece of property with a few well weathered structures and a number of old motor homes parked around. By the look of things, I'm guessing that any structure which could have possibly housed people was all filled to capacity with human inhabitants. There were also a number of old vehicles around, their glory days long gone and a variety of miscellaneous items strewn about. In these parts, there is a high probability that the folks living in these conditions are also using heavy duty mind altering substances of all sorts.

You may need to click on the image to biggify it to see the traps.

The weather called for off and on snow and rain showers throughout the day. The fresh dusting of snow on the ground melted away as the way progressed. The TNR team consisted of two of us newbies, where this was our first real trapping event, one somewhat experienced trapper and our team leader, Nancy, who is a TNR expert. (Nancy is the one who greatly assisted me on trapping of Oliver's family). A photographer from the local newspaper also joined us, apparently the newspaper will be running a story on our grassroots TNR group, Community Cats Coalition. I might end up being famous!

Our goal was to trap 15 feral cats, 20 if we were lucky. The colony's caretaker is trusted by the cats, so she assisted with the setting up of the traps and had been feeding them in the traps for over a week prior. She lives onsite and wants the best for the cats. The plan was that when we got there, we would bait and set the traps then retreat to the vehicles while the resident caretaker would call out to the cats like the Pied Piper. The cats would immediately swarm her and quickly make their way into the traps. Our team leader noted she witnessed this happen last week when she visited the site earlier. This was gonna be easy, so we all thought.

I had three personal goals for this event. I wanted to learn more about how to trap in a larger scale site, I wanted to get to know more cat-loving people and I wanted to see if trapping cats that I didn't have a relationship with would be emotionally easier than my experience trapping Oliver and his family.

So, when we arrived, we were not greeted by the cat-friendly lady as planned, but rather an extremely belligerent and angry man who screamed at us to take the traps and go away (he used much more colorful language). He went on to say he was going to just shoot all the cats and be done with it. While he was going on and on, the cat-friendly colony caretaker woman was no where to be found. We learned that she would not be making an appearance. There did happen to be a few other people milling about who tried to calm the guy down, but to no avail. Someone said that the belligerent man had a gun, but he probably wouldn't use it - oh joy!

The decision was made that we would continue going forward, the plan must go on! I made a mental note that next cooperative trapping I go on, I'm getting a bullet-proof vest- yikes! We hastily went about setting and baiting all 24 traps that were scattered across the property. In an instant I forgot everything I had learned about how to set traps as I was so freaked about getting shot by the angry cat-hating violent man, whose property we were now trespassing on (he had demanded we leave). It wasn't until later, when I was sitting in the car watching for cats, that I realized I hadn't put the bait in the right spot (it goes behind the trip plate rather than on the trip plate) and I hadn't checked to see if the traps were on stable ground (not wobbly). Gosh, on one trap, I didn't even realize the back door was folded in, so the cat could freely escape!

Without the colony-caretaker to call the cats out, we were stuck waiting and watching. Slowly, one or two would meander out and make their way into the traps. After four hours we had managed to trap only 7 feral cats. Thankfully, the caretaker-lady finally made an appearance. She apologized for not coming sooner and noted her man was so angry earlier that she didn't dare cross him. She asked us to leave for a while, she thought our presence and the strange vehicles were keeping the cats from coming out. So, we took off for a late lunch. I decided to head out after lunch, so I missed the last bit of fun. I just heard from Nancy that the grand total for the day was 12 trapped cats and plans were made for trying to get the remaining cats.

Who knew trapping feral cats could be such an adventure! Nancy tells me that the circumstances of this site were quite unusual. I was happy to hear that it's actually rare to run across such a violent and threatening property owner. Even with the added unexpected bonus of fearing for me life, all my goals were achieved, and then some! My first goal was met as I learned a ton. I learn best by getting out there and getting my hands dirty and I would rather learn from a very challenging, atypical site than an easy one. It was great getting to know more dedicated cat-loving people, and I learned that there was very little emotional challenge for me in trapping the unknown-to-me cats (although that could partly be due to so much of my emotional bandwidth being consumed with fear of the violent man!)

I'm excited for the next opportunity to help out some more feral cats! And it feels good knowing I helped these precious cats today, it's not their fault they live near such crazy humans. Thanks to Nancy and Jenny for organizing this event! I look forward to helping more ferals in the future.