Kitty Condo Deluxe

It is with great pride I  present to you the master planned community known forever more as Kitty Condo Deluxe.  This luxurious, exclusive, gated community features three distinct and individually decorated single room condos with plush terry interiors and optimal floor heating.  The exteriors are a delightful terry texture adding insulation and good looks.  But the fun doesn't stop inside.  The outdoor environs allow for top of the condo lounging for those warmer days and more temperate night conditions.  Super Deluxe Condo 1 even features an exterior love seat - perfect for entertaining.  

Stroll along the grounds to find the patio dining areas serving sumptuous gourmet meals three times a day.  Drink fresh from the state of the art ever full water fountain.  Relax in comfort on the grounds of this estate and feel free to pursue your favorite pastimes just steps away through two convenient doorways.

There is no place you would rather be... Kitty Condo Deluxe...

... and fade to black.

I can't believe we did it - and in record time - and without personal injury.  Let me share with you how it all went down.

Here is the space with two of the cut pieces of lumber that will support the shelf top.  That pink flap you see just to the left of center is a kitty access flap.  We will have to make sure the shop vac does not conflict with their use of this flap.

Here is the shelf top, cut to size and awaiting install.

By this point we had taken measurements from many different places in the alcove, attempting to head off the cantankerous house syndrome that means there is no area that is truly square, level or easy to attach things to.  Being veterans of past encounters we figured if we only had to re-cut things twice we would be doing better than usual.

Oh My God!  It fits!  Well in this picture it does.  What you don't see is the re-cut of the west support piece and the repositioning of the north support piece.  It is up, it is stable and can probably support over 100 lbs which means it will likely be able to withstand the potential of 40 pounds of cat.

Here is a view of the top of the shelf.  It is somewhat banged up, but no worries...

That is why they make contact paper.  Now we have a smooth, clean and above all, cleanable surface to manage the inevitable cat puke.

So here it all is put together with the two kitty condos on top and the shop vac, kitty condo and kitty bed on the bottom.  Although you cannot see it from this view, we managed to keep enough space between the shop vac and the cat flap that the kitties should have no trouble using it.

However, all of this will be for nothing if the cats don't like it.  Who knows what goes through their little feline minds that might cause them to reject this labor of love.  I have created some flyers with the above sales pitch but will the advertising sway them?  They have been completely absent from the scene the entire time we were doing the build out so it will be a complete surprise.  What if they like only one of the condos?  What if during the night they locate a cordless drill and dismantle the whole thing?  What if they burst into tears and demand we put things back the way it was?  The suspense is killing me.

No worries.  Here is Ike leading the cat appreciation front.  It happens to be hot the day we finished this (of course) so he did not venture into the condos but leaped right up on top.  Minor glitch, the condo wobbled.  It was like I was afraid of,  we really are going to have to bolt them to the table.

Here is a before and after shot:

Although it doesn't show up that well, we probably reclaimed several square feet of traffic area.  Now things are mostly contained in just the alcove leaving us the rest of the porch to walk through. Success!

Now I just have to finish putting up all the junk I removed...

Front Door Kitty Condo Plans

So, after creating an improved kitty condo for the back door cat, we felt compelled to create the improved multilevel kitty condo complex for our front door quartet.  This was going to require planning, potentially a lot of work and probably a complete redesign of whatever initial plans due to typical unforeseen complications, also known as old house cantankerousness.  The best thing about the front door Kitty condos is that the 'condo' part is already made and what we are really doing is creating the condo environs.  In other words we want to make a spot that will 1) provide easy kitty access to said condos and 2) not get in our way as we try to enter and exit via our front door.

Point number 2 has been a sore spot for us for the last 4 years of the front door cat era.  Their 'things' are always in the way be it food bowls, water bowl, cat condos, cat towels or the occasional dead animal.

The kitty 'footprint'.  Lets see cat towel, kitty condo, cat food bowls all competing with space with the human shoes, shop vac and the empty water jug a cat has knocked down.  There must be at least a foot of space for us to walk through.  What are we complaining about?  Thankfully, no dead rodent to leap over today.

This is the 'before' view of the proposed kitty condo area.  There seems to be a very small and very specific black hole in there that draws in various junk, much like a magpie might take shiny things to its nest.  That rakishly tilted towel is another signature of our fractious felines.  If it is not nailed down, they will rearrange it.

Cats are in many ways akin to teenage humans in their independence, aloofness and as we discovered, messy room ways.  We can lay out a very neat and tidy cat towel placement in the evening and by morning they have mussed it about and rearranged it to be maximally in the way of our coming and going through the front door.  They knock things off shelves and never pick up after themselves.  They have knock down, drag out arguments over who gets what part of the front porch.  They do not like to share their things with one another.  And yet, on a cold morning we will find all four of them in a kitty pile up atop their two heating pads (just a note about heating pads - some come with a 2 hour cut off which does not work because 'Kitty' wants to be warm for more than 2 hours.  I have linked to the type of heating pad that works great for our crew).

This information lets us know that while everyone needs to have their own space, they also need to have a way to cuddle together when the mood strikes them.  They want to be close to each other, but not too close.  Anything we create for them has to be sturdily attached to whatever it is resting on.  Everything we create for them has to be positioned in such a way they cannot rearrange it into the chaos they so love.

We have three kitty condos that are ready for use.

One is a refurbished covered cat litter box that is 18 inches long, 14 inches wide and 18 inches tall. It has seen better days and is probably about 7 - 10 years old.  You can see where I have taped a piece of wood over what used to be the hole for the shop lamp.  The very hole that used to be a vent for this covered cat litter box (you can find my rant about it in this post).  I plan on installing a heating pad for warmth, along with several cat towels for warmth and comfort.

One box is a refurbished storage container with a hole cut out of its narrow end.  It is 21 inches long, 14 inches wide and 16 inches tall.  I have taped a plank of wood across the top to cover the hole that allowed the lamp heat through.

Here you can see inside where I have the heating pad in place.  I will cover the heating pad with a blanket and drape blankets around the box as well.

   

The third box is an actual pet crate that is 23 inches long, 16 inches wide and 16 inches tall.  Thankfully I did not cut a hole in this one, so no tape needed.  It has its heating pad ready to go.

Here is how I cover the heating pad by nestling it inside a folded towel.

Here is how the whole thing looks with cat towels inside and out.

This one is big enough we will have room for an open air cat bed on top of it.

Now we just need to create the space for the three kitty condos and the shop vac.  The space we have available is a small alcove off the front porch that is 44 inches wide and 21 inches deep on one side and we have about 25 inches of space available on the other side.

Here is what the space looks like with all the crap removed.  Surprisingly the debridement only took about 15 minutes.  Of course now all the stuff is just sitting outside the front porch, but since the area I need to work in is clear I am chalking that up on the win column.

Here is the plan I have created for this space.

This is the view from the top showing the shelf unit we will install in the alcove.

The shelf top is 24 inches wide on one side and 14 inches wide on the other end.  We are harvesting this shelf from our workshop.  I can't remember when we last had to create anything new.  We just move the things we have already created from one place to another.  Right this shelf it is a little longer than the alcove, so we will be trimming it to fit.  The back edge we will brace against the north and west wall of the porch alcove and the front edge will have a support leg.  Below this shelf will be Kitty condo 1 on the right.  On the left side is a space for the bulky shop vac that also needs to live on the front porch.  We want to leave enough room for the shop vac to fit under the shelf without giving the kitties any unnecessary access above or behind it.

Above the shelf and resting on it are Kitty condo 2 and 3.

Kitty condo 2 will be on the right side of the shelf and since it is 14 inches wide it will just fit.  The access to the condo is through the narrow end which will give the cats about 8 inches of space between it and Kitty condo 3.  This should be ample space for them and as a bonus they can also lounge on top of this condo.  Kitty condo 3 is the tallest and shortest of the condos and will fit with its access door pointing toward the front of the alcove space.  The cats will be able to reach it via a six inch front area, which again, given cat agility should be ample room.  Although this condo is somewhat dome shaped on the top, many a cat has perched there before, so we anticipate them using it that way as well.
Both condos will have to be wired on to the shelf in order to keep the brawling quartet from knocking things asunder.  It might seem like large objects resting solidly on a flat surface would not be particularly tip prone, but these guys are a professional disruption crew and God only knows how they might do it.  If there is a way, those condos will be on the floor unless I do the equivalent of bolting them to the shelf. 

Seen from the front of the alcove.

The arrangement shows the shelf unit is positioned 30 inches off the floor, leaving enough room for the shop vac to easily be maneuvered in and out.  Kitty condo 1 rests on the floor to the right and there is quite a bit of space for a cat bed on top of it.

So that is the plan and all we have left to do is 1) deconstruct the shelf top from where it is in the shop and refit it to correct length for the alcove space, 2) install the shelf into the alcove space, 3) arrange and secure the kitty condos on the shelf, the shop vac beneath the shelf and the other kitty condo beneath the shelf, and 4) swath the kitty condos in cat towels and heat with heating pads.  Tada.  I only count about a dozen ways this will not go smoothly, up to and including complete rejection by the kitties it is being created for.

stay tuned...

Kitty Condo #1

It's that time of year again and as the chilly weather descends I once again begin to agonize over how comfortable my cats are.  They live outside and very much love that arrangement.  They are free to range around and do cat things and have a constant food and water supply along with the comforts we provide them.  We live inside and very much love not having cat dander, cat hair and the inevitable litter box inside our small house with us.  Not to mention cat poop in the dryer (a trio of incidences in our distant past which involved my currently oldest cat, two pristine, clean and unused litter boxes, an open dryer door full of clean dry towels, all mixed with the typical insanity that is known as 'cat').

Needless to say, we are not about to resolve the cold weather scenario by bringing 5 cats into our two human and two dog household.  With the Border Collie in residence we already have an organic shedding machine capable of creating virtual snow drifts of hair (dust puppies) every day.  Seriously, if you leave something on the floor without picking it up and sweeping beneath it for longer than a week an amazing raft of hair (shed-lock) secretes itself beneath the object causing involuntary flinching when said object is moved. Add five more hair contributing creatures and we have the makings of a horror flick (it lives under the chair!).

So no, I do not wish to live in a fur lined home - and again, I have no desire to increase the poop in the dryer potential...

What to do though?  The oldest cat is now 15 and prone to respiratory issues.  Previously I have used a crate like container and a spot lamp positioned on top so that the heat from the bulb would warm the enclosure.  This worked great the first incarnation when I used a covered cat litter box (now defunct with no cats living inside and thoroughly sanitized) with a hole punched in the top where there used to be a vent (let me digress just a moment here while I struggle with the idea that a closed cat litter box needs a top vent.  A closed litter box is a great idea, much like the lid of a toilet being placed in the down position when a plumbing situation would preclude flushing a used toilet.  This enclosed box that reduces the 'me seeing the nasty used litter' to near zero and the 'me smelling the nasty fresh kitty poo' to something tolerable - this perfectly fine arrangement needs... a vent?  I mean, come on, were the makers of this kitty toilet somehow under the impression that they needed to prevent the build up of dangerous kitty gasses?  Was the fact that the front of the enclosure being totally open not enough to vent the terrible, dangerous, kitty gas?  Were there a number of cat litter box explosions rocking the country that somehow I was unaware of?  Because really, exploding enclosed cat litter boxes would definitely be something the news media would be all over.  I would have heard.  So, let me be clear here - enclosed cat litter boxes do not need a top vent.)

Indeed that enclosed cat litter box not only worked great to reduce the cat litter box explosions in my life, but also worked great after a retrofit as a kitty warming box.  I had two boxes and at the time I had two cats and they worked great all winter long with snuggly warm kitties encased in towel covered and towel lined boxes.  Perfect.

But then of course, I had to go and think about it.  At the time I was using 75 watt bulbs to give off a very strong heat.  Then I ran out of 75 watt bulbs one evening (the bulbs lasted a reasonable time, but cats being who they are liked to lounge on top of the crate and would occasionally knock them off and break a bulb) so I used a 60 watt bulb instead.  I noticed this reduced the 'brightness'.  That got me to thinking - just how healthy was it for my kitties to be constantly subjected to bright light?  Was it throwing off their kitty circadian rhythm?  Did it disrupt their kitty REM sleep?  Does a creature that sleeps 20 out of every 24 hours even have a circadian rhythm or is it more of a flat line?

So I purchased an expensive red heat bulb designed for heat loving reptiles.  That solved the bright light problem and seemed to create a wonderful heat.   The cats loved it.  But what they loved more than being in the crate was resting awkwardly on top of the crate, half of which was taken up by the hood of the lamp, leaving only a small space that a very determined cat could squinch itself into.  They would climb into the crate only when it got truly cold at night.  This top of the crate perching led to that expensive light lasting only one week due to repeated cat toppling.

So I discovered that black light bulbs were less expensive, put out less light that I could see (mind you it did spark me to a fruitless internet search on what light range was perceptible to cats - uhh, better than us?...) and was very warm.  The cats seemed to do fine with this change and continued to perch atop the crate.

Thus ended that cold season and I put the crates away with just a brief foray into researching heating pads for cats.  After all they seemed to like the heat coming up from below ("Hello," my cats said - "care to notice how we awkwardly perch here?  Think that means anything, hmmmm?").  I gave up this search after finding that, 1. Yes, they did make special heating pads for animals, and 2. Special meant expensive.  And so I put it out of my mind thinking I would resolve it the next season.

Fast forward to the influx of way too many cats and cold, very cold, winter weather on the doorstep.  I needed enough warm space for 8 cats, two in the backyard and 6 in the front.  At that time we had not enclosed the front porch space.  For this scenario I created another light box by cutting holes in the top and side of a small storage container and scrounging a couple of human heating pads to go into a couple of other storage containers turned on their side.  The whole complex was swathed with bath towels inside and out.  Three new kitty warming containers for the six kitties worked just fine (here I must point out how utterly frustrating it is to have almost all your bath towels being used for the cats and the ultimate designation of certain towels being forever more labeled as 'cat towels').

But were they comfortable enough?  Thus my husband and I rebuilt and enclosed the front porch by the next winter.  They have a raised wooden floor and slowly but surely we have been finishing out the walls for greater insulation and installing a separate wall socket so we don't have to run power cords under our front door anymore.

This brings us to today and the beginning of the 2012/2013 cold weather season.  It has not gotten really cold yet and does not look like it will be very cold for maybe a couple of more weeks as well.  Me being me, I got to wondering just how comfortable my cats are again and so I have been building and scheming once more.

Kitty Condo #1

I present for you Kitty Condo #1.  This enclosure uses a medium size metal dog crate insulated with 4 square pillows inside (top, back and sides) along with a thick exercise mat between cat and pillows.

The pillows will be a total loss after this, no doubt, but delaying the need to replace the cat fouled pillow with an easier to clean barrier that also provides insulation was the brainstorm of my dear husband.

Here is the view of the top.  I secured the pillows and mat with loops of string interwoven with the metal bars of the dog crate.

I must confess that the current arrangement went through several incarnations, one of which was having one of the plastic storage crates inside the dog crate and surrounded by pillows - but that looked 'cramped' I decided after spending an hour putting the whole thing together (I don't want my wittle, bittie, kittie to be cramped!) so I dismantled it and started over.

It is heated by a large human heating pad (on low for now) which is covered by a pillow case.

A layer of bath towel also covers the heating pad to make sure the heat is never overly intense and to cut down on the need to change the pillow case as frequently as well as absorb any 'cat puke' situations.  The towel also provides additional snuggly warmth and changing towels is one of the quickest ways to satisfy the kitty's need for fresh bedding.

The exterior of the condo is covered by two thinner yoga mats, front to back and side to side arrangement.

 The outside is also covered by two bath towels.  This kitty condo allows for an interior cat space of about 16 inches high, 14 inches wide and 18 inches long.  The top of the condo is the kitty feeding area.

Mr. Dory the 15 year old seems to love, love, love it and who wouldn't.

He can stretch out, stand up, and do kitty gymnastics if he wants inside his warm dark condo.

The whole arrangement is sitting on top of a table next to my bedroom window, well outside of Border Collie nose range and well within my monitoring area.  His towels are changed once a week and his wet and dry food bowls are within easy reach but not stinking up his crate when he is done eating.  If he weren't such a loner he would probably be inviting his teenage friends over to chill in his new crib.  We are holding off on installing the flat screen TV, cable internet, surround sound audio and mood lighting for now. 

One down and now on to the front door cat comfort challenge... stay tuned.

Choices for the Fall

Okay, so now that the fall gardening bug has bitten me I am itching with anticipation of getting my garden started again, provided the horrific heat and humidity comply and go away - far, far away.  Yes, I admit it has come to this... most of my garden planning is based in a pure fantasy world where nature cooperates and provides reasonable temperatures, rainfall and insect control - nothing at all like the actual world surrounding me.  Yet, it is this naively, optimistic avoidance of reality that is the backbone of gardening on the Gulf Coast.

I am planting a fall garden because in other parts of the world there is this thing called Fall.  I know there is because I have seen the after school specials and movies depicting it even though I have never in my life experienced Fall as a season.   Oh sure, we sometimes have 'fall-like' weather, meaning the temperature gets reasonable, the humidity drops and human beings in this part of the world emerge from their air conditioned enclosures like groundhogs hoping to see (or is it not see) their shadows.  We make all sorts of resolutions (I will go for a walk every day!) and discoveries (Is that a cool breeze?) and then the next day it is either back up to 90 degrees with 90% humidity or down into the low 40s with driving rain.  Our regions bipolar weather disorder allows us to experience a years worth of climatic events over the course of a week and sometimes in a single day.  There is no 'season' except for summer and Mega-summer which fill up about 6 to 7 months of our year.

But, because other places have Fall and have fall gardens, I too feel the need to have a fall garden.  To do this all I have to do is ignore the weather.  So, with my fantasy life fully engaged, I plan my fall crops.

Here is what the guide regarding my planting zone 9a says to plant.   I always figure that little "a" attached to the 9 stands for 'approximate' or 'absurd' or maybe 'abandon all hope yea who plant here' - but I go on in spite of it.

For September it says I can plant:

Beans
 We had a great bush bean season from the spring/summer garden and so these will go into the center bed where we had the okra.  I will be planting them from seed, so I need to get hopping on this asap to maximize their productivity.

Broccoli
 I have never grown broccoli successfully, probably due to the fact I have never paid the slightest attention to things like 'when to plant the broccoli'.  I am going to pass on this one even though I love to eat broccoli - part of the problem actually.  Even if I got the broccoli to 'brock' I don't think my plantings could keep up with my consumption.

 Cabbage
 I was a novice to the world of cabbage until this last spring but now that I have had success, sign me up again.  I am pretty sure my success this spring was a fluke since I put it in at the very last possible planting date.  Maybe planting it now at the start of a season will yield even better results.

Carrots 
 This is really a toss up for me.  I have planted carrots before and sometimes have done rather well, but not the last two attempts.  I have put more into the last two tries than all the tries before with deeply dug, sandy soil and constant vigil bordering on cheer leading.  I feel sort of rejected by this root crop so I am putting it into the no category for now.

Celery
 Never tried it before.  It looks like it might be very simple to grow, much like parsley.  I guess I am hesitant because it is so cheap in the stores and quite frankly I can't remember the last time I ate celery.  Pass for now.

Collards
 My collard greens were big and beefy and quite frankly one of them is still surviving right now in the garden (if you count surviving as being somewhat smothered by sweet potato vines.  So, I can grow collards.  But I don't actually want to eat collards.  Ah the vegetable gardener's dilemma - being good at growing something you are not wanting to put in your mouth.  Pass for now.

Cucumbers
It was actually news to me a few years ago that cucumbers could be planted again in the fall.  I guess I associate them with spring and summer so much it never dawned on me that the temperate fall would be a good bet for them.  I planted some sort of wacky heat/humidity loving weird cucumber type whose actual plant name is eluding me.  If it grows great I will be kicking myself for forgetting what type it is.  If it is a dud, then I will never again try a wacky cucumber variety.

Kale
 It is a beautiful plant that grows very well for me and then I just leave it there because like collards, I am not a big fan of eating greens.  Maybe I will just to have its beautiful leaves gracing my garden.




 Lettuce
 There have been several great lettuce crops in my gardening life.  There have also been some beautiful patches that I have ignored.  It all has to do with the selection.  This spring I made the mistake of planting a mixture that was various greens as well as a few lettuces.  Not for me.  I will get some select either leaf or bib lettuces and try for this fall.  I am also going to try planting more each week to see if I can keep up with my consumption.

Mustard
I grow it every chance I get, even though, like the other greens I seldom eat it.  Never mind that, the leaves are beautiful and it grows wonderfully.

Onions
 My onions barely onioned this spring and I am not sure why.  Part of it is that I don't know exactly what I did that made my previous onion patch so successful.  I am not even sure if planting a fall onion bed will result in onion bulbs or just green onions, but damn the torpedoes - I am already in and going to plant some more as well.

Peas
 Okay, this might sound like I am not a true southerner, but I just am not a pea fan.  Except for snow peas which are great, but I am not sure they do well with our weather.  I also don't get the whole 'inoculate the soil' business regarding planting peas.  Probably why my previous earlier attempts have yielding nothing.

Peppers
 If peppers would let me I would plant them in the dead of winter.  I actually one mild winter kept a pepper plant alive to the next year.  I learned the hard lesson about this - the second year they barely produce.  I already have planted two peppers - a sweet banana and a mild tam Jalapeno.  That may be all I put in for the fall.

Radish
 Radishes are almost guaranteed to come up for you, but my first 3 years I had poor to no results.  Then I had incredible results, but the problem is that I don't actually like to eat as much radish as I am able to grow, so once they get going I just sort of ignore them.  I did learn that if you have neglected your radishes to the point they are as big as turnips, you can cook them like turnips and they taste like turnips.  So there is that.

Spinach
 I have never yet gotten spinach to a harvestable condition.  They sprout, they grow a bit and then they just seem to be stunted.  Maybe I am expecting too much from the type I am planting.  Maybe my expectation is that I will get a whole cooked can of spinach from one plant.  Not a reality.  I have some seed, so it is probably that I will throw it into the dirt this fall, but I am not excited about it.



  

Squash
 I am excited about squash.  Specifically the butternut squash that I discovered last fall.  Talk about making you feel like you have done something right.  The plants grow amazingly long vines and they produce about a billion of these large squash per plant, but best of all, nothing seems to want to eat them.  I found my seeds last night and I am putting them in asap.

Tomato
 Even though I am not always successful with the fall tomato plantings, there have been many times that I have had Christmas tomatoes.  The Better Boy, Early Girl and Rutgers that I have planted seem well on their way.

Turnips
 When we mad the beds for the ceder garden was the first time I ever tried growing turnips for anything other than the greens.  I still feel like a champ when I pull those purple topped beauties from the soil.  Definitely going to plant them this fall.






So with all my choices it looks like I will be having a bean/cabbage/lettuce/mustard/onion/pepper/squash/tomato/turnip fall garden.

I am sure that many other things will work their way into the garden as well, including several types of herbs.  So, it is a loose plan with room to grow.