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Stray Cat House

by Simple Solutions.


Stray Kitty House images

This is a small house we have built to protect our strays, should they
require protection. It is a house built from memories and friends donations.
So it offers reminders of both family, friends and pets. Information on these
aspects are listed below the picture index. Enjoy.

You can click on the pictures in this index to enlarge the picture.  
Just click on the button to get back to this page,
or you can use the / buttons to view the other images.


Pic#
Image         
1 Full frontal view of our stray CatHouse Image 1
2 Right front view Image 2
3 Left front view. Image 3
4 Right rear view. Image 4
5 Left rear view. Image 4
Okay, here is the deal with this CatHouse -
My wife is saddened by the thought of abandoned cats,
I can't really say that I blame her there, but we already
have 5 cats. So needless to say, strays, are not too often
welcome in our yard, as 4 of our cats have full run of the yard.
We have a deaf cat, maybe the toughest of them all, that needs
to be on a run, which she loves. So she has a 50' run that certainly
limits her yard coverage.

Suffice it to say, no stray is welcome near her area if she is outside.
Actually, no other animal, other than skunks, are permitted near her area.
She sees to that. Tolerant of skunks she is though - go figure.

Ahh but I do digress, we are here to explain the NON red-lighted
CatHouse currently sitting in our backyard. I will break it down,
as best as I can:
The design, we currently have two, well now 3 outdoor cat houses.
The largest of which I built a number of years back for an
awesome collie mix we had some time ago.
RIP Tiffany
The other house we have was made by my father, (RIP Dad),
for one of his cats in the late 90s.
This house is kept on the back deck or near it so our
'Leashed' cat can use this when we tie her up outside the
back door. It is THIS house which I modeled the new one after.

So there are actually no plans that were followed in the construction.
A few modifications from his design though.
One of them being is that I installed 4 - 4" X 4" X 6" legs/feet, to
keep it off the ground and minimize water damage, not to mention,
snow clearance for the cats, we do get some in these parts.
Snow that is, well stray cats too I guess...
The materials used now;
All 4 walls are made of pine stock which was cut down from some
shelving that my Dad had made for my Mom's (RIP Mom) book store,
as well as plywood panels on the interior, as detailed below.
The floor was made from 2 sandwiched pieces of 3/8" plywood,
donated to us from our nephew Kris, as leftover from a project
he had completed at his house. Between each piece of plywood
and/or exterior wall is a 1/8" thick piece of carpet liner,
(donated by a dearly departed neighbor, Gene C. RIP Gene) and
an equal size piece of #15 felt paper as a vapor barrier.

The carpet liner, and felt paper should serve as insulation to
minimize wind/rain for the occupants.
The roof is made of 2 sheets (1 per side) of 1/2" plywood, also
donated by our nephew Kris. (Thanks Kris!) Lined with #15 felt paper
which we had left over from our recently re-shingled house.
I used 30 year left-over architectural shingles, 2 rows per side
as well as a few pieces of 3-tab shingles for the cap.
I also, silly as it may be, included an incorporated soffet and
ridge vent, to hopefully extend the life of the roof... It is
only about 1/4" along the soffets and about the same along the ridge.

After all, I don't want the occupants to get too cold.
I also included the board and batten design to minimize air/wind
through and between the boards. I used some wood we bought from
a friend in the past which was ordered from Peru. The wood is
called Peruvian Alder and once grew on the Andes mountains of Peru.

I hope this sheds enough info on our little CatHaus.

Another little tidbit of info to share is the cost.
This CatHaus, being built from stock on hand, had two costs
associated with it, I had to buy exterior wood glue ($2.95),
to secure some of the pieces of the roof and the other cost
would be the labor, approximately 24 hours total labor.
That was it for out of pocket expenses.
Drop a note if you have further information you seek.
Thanks, GrandpaKirk

I do have quite a few other projects that I will be posting soon.
Most of which have a similar low-cost build price tag.


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