Oh my, you guys have me laughing so hard, I'm crying. Those are all just too funny - especially the dog with the sausage grinder!! @Ina I. Wonder, as to your questions - cats do great outside, if they are raised from kittens that way. They learn very easily how to hide or climb trees, and a myriad other ways to take care of themselves. If cornered, I've seen a kitten terrify a Great Dane - just by arching it's back, hissing and slapping the poor dog. I have to say, it was a hilarious thing to watch. We actually had a cat door installed in our back door, so that they could come and go when they wanted. It was nice because we had the benefit of an indoor cat, but when they wanted to use "the bathroom", they much preferred to go outside. Of course, we had problems with other critters coming in the cat door at night. So if you go that route, make sure you close the door and latch it at night.
To read more about our "infamous" cat door, and others experiences with cats, here's an old thread that's worth reading. http://www.seniorsonly.club/threads/oh-rats.32/#post-1079
Thanks Mal for the thread. I do miss having a kitty to curl up with, and their purring can put you to sleep. But what I miss the most is their funny antics. They can get into the most unusual positions in the oddest contraptions. And, I think they say pretty please in a way that I crumble to when they want something.
Rather than starting a new thread for this, I'll use this old thread since the topic is stray cats. I don't know what they do in the winter, but four stray cats show up around here now and then. I believe that they are abandoned rather than feral because our weather isn't exactly conducive to large feral colonies, but one of them has been around for the past couple of winters. I have been avoiding any interaction with them because I really can't take in any more cats. Ella isn't happy with Bubba and he came to us as a small kitten, so I couldn't possibly saddle her with adult cats. But at the same time, I can't see wasting the food that Ella and Bubba don't eat, given that they have both become picky eaters, and I pay upward of a couple of dollars a can for most of what I feed them, and they leave a lot of it behind. So, whatever they don't eat by the time I go to bed, I leave on the back porch, and it's gone in the morning. I have set up cameras there to see where it's going, and most of it seems to be going to the three cats. One of them has been around for a few years now. He is a large male, who doesn't seem to have missed very many meals but, at the same time, he is missing part of an ear and he's a long-haired cat in need of grooming. Either he is very good at finding food, or he belongs to someone who leaves him to roam at will, and never brushes him out. I see him sometimes during the day when I'm outdoors. If I call to him, he stops and looks at me before deciding he'd better not come closer, so I strongly believe he is or at least has been someone's pet. Another is about the same size as Bubba (who has gotten quite large), looks a lot like Bubba, and still has a kitten face. He (or she) is thin but not as if s/he's starving. For that matter, Bubba is thin although he eats a lot, but that's because he's very active. Anyhow, when I see this one during the day, I sometimes mistake it for Bubba and worry that he has escaped. A third is a gray (some would say blue) cat. I haven't seen this one as often, and have only seen it on camera. There is a fourth cat who chased Ella back into our yard one day. That one is a white female who lives underneath a building next door that used to be a taxi office. There is a fairly clean, dry space beneath the building, which is enclosed on three sides, so it's probably a good place for a stray cat. Ella does not appear to have been hurt. Like most catfights, it was probably more noise than anything else, and she stopped once Ella made it back into our yard. Yeah, I wouldn't declare Ella to have been the winner. Ella used to hang out at the taxi place sometimes, but that seems to have been claimed by this other cat. However, I have never seen the white cat in our yard, and she hasn't even come over for food at night. I don't want to get involved with any of these cats but it doesn't make sense to make them dig through the compost pile looking for discarded food when I could more easily leave it for them on the back steps. Anyhow, what led me to post about them is that one of them left me a dead mouse on the back steps, seemingly as a thank-you gift. Ella had been grounded for a few days after staying out until almost midnight one night, and Bubba is only outdoors with me for short periods, so it had to have been one of the strays. Instead of eating it, the cat left it at my back door.
The gray cat that I mentioned above is the one that I most commonly see here, although a couple of others come around sometimes. Since I have had my cameras out, I can see that s/he is around at all hours of the day or night, which doesn't mean that s/he's always there but that s/he is apt to show up at any time, even on cold nights when it's snowing. Since Ella and Bubba have both gotten picky about what they will eat, there's canned food available for him (or her) nearly every day, and I have been putting some kibble out whenever I don't have any canned food. I still don't want to make this cat mine, and taking it into the house is out of the question because Ella still hasn't forgiven me for Bubba, but there's no point in throwing expensive cat food away when there's a cat outside who needs it. Since I've been doing that, these stray or feral cats are noticeably healthier and since Ella and Bubba aren't going outdoors right now, this gray cat doesn't have a lot of conflicts to contend with, although there was a fight outside a few nights ago. Michelle orders meal kits sometimes, and they come in thick styrofoam containers with a cover. I drilled a cat-sized hole in the side of one this afternoon, since I have a hole cutter, and drilled a corresponding hole in the side of an old plastic bin that we had in the library, which also has a cover. Michelle just bought a new memory foam mattress to replace the older one that we had, along with a couple of toppers that she bought before deciding we needed to replace it. I cut a piece from one of the memory foam toppers to fit the bottom of the plastic bin, place the styrofoam bin inside of it, then cut smaller pieces of memory foam to fill in the gaps on the side and to provide insulation. I selected a thick sweater that doesn't fit me anymore and put that inside of it, along with an old sweatshirt, and set it against the shed that we have at the back of our property, which is on the path that the gray cat always takes coming over here. The entry hole is facing the shed, which was built on bricks so that the outdoor cat shelter can be accessed from beneath the shed, where it won't fill in with snow. Maybe the cat already has a better place to shelter but, from the cameras, it looked like s/he might be sleeping under my Tracker or beneath my raised planters and, while that would keep it out of the snow, it couldn't be a comfortable place to sleep.
These are a couple of shelters that I put out. I don't think anyone has been using them yet, though. The plastic bin has a thick styrofoam bin inside of it, with insulation material on the bottom, sides, and top. The other one is just the styrofoam bin.
Maybe put a can of the food in there, and then they will go in to eat, and see that it is warm and cozy inside ? We used to have one of those blue Maltese cats like the one in your picture. She was an amazing hunter, and used to drag home little wild rabbits and squirrels to feed her kitten and the start of teaching them to hunt. I am glad that you are helping out these stray cats, @Ken Anderson . You have a good heart.
Canned food freezes in the types of temperatures we're having right now but I have put some kibble near them so that the natural curiosity of a cat might lure them into checking it out. One of them has only been there since yesterday, the other a few days longer than that. They each have one of my old sweaters in them, but they were laundered beforehand, as they've been on a hanger in the closet for years. My cameras caught one of them trying to make a nest out of the leaves under the fire escape stairs a few nights ago, which is why I thought of putting one there. We've had as many as five cats at one time before so I wouldn't mind taking a couple of them into the house, but I can't do that to Ella.
Ken, I don't think you are going to get them to go in there. Cats are very smart and that looks like a trap. I think you would have a better chance of them going into some kind of three sided shelter. Don't forget to put a heating pad in there to keep them warm. You ol' softie, you.
Okey dokey.... leave the front porch door open and install a heating pad there with a nice cozy blanket over it.
At 9:53:28, I am refilling the outside cat bowl with food. At 9:54:16, less than a minute later, the gray cat is coming in to eat. I think it's my outdoor kitty, as it has been marking its territory in the yard, and seems to most always be here, although I seldom see it when I'm outside.
The gray cat that I pictured earlier has been in my shelters repeatedly over the past few days, according to my cameras. They don't show me how long he stays in there but he has been shown going in and coming out of both of them at different times. There is also a very fluffy long-haired cat that has at least stuck his head in one of them.