The Miniature Yard Panther
Our outdoor cat is a snob.
When the weather threatened below-zero nights, I thought I’d be clever and re-do the makeshift shelter I’d made for our Working Cat1, Rishi.
Rishi had other ideas. She wouldn’t use the upgraded shelter.
Back in mid-December, when, on a whim, I’d started putting food out again on the random chance that she was still in the area2, I’d kludged two plastic bins and a small cardboard box into a basic shelter and threaded the electric cord for an outdoor-rated heating pad through into the inside. In the bottom of the inner cardboard box, I’d tossed a small car floor mat that I’d kept from when we sold our vintage Mercedes, which had had wool carpets.
Perfect size and warmth for the bottom of an outdoor cat house.
On our trail camera —the only way we see Rishi, as she is very human-avoidant— we could see her snacking away at the food I’d leave out, taking naps in the shelter, stretching luxuriously when exiting, eating some more, then going back in for a little snooze.
When I upgraded the shelter3 two weeks ago, she’d sniff the new structure disdainfully and not enter. She’d steadily fill up on food and help herself to some water (in a heated outdoor water bowl, of course) and then split for parts unknown once again.
Because I want to encourage Rishi to hang around our property as much as possible, I decided last Thursday to restore the original two-bins-and-a-box cat shelter, this time with a bit more care and permanence. I insulated between the cardboard box and the outer bins, cut a proper hole for the cord of the heating pad, and included an insulated floor made of a piece of warm foam mat. I used the above-mentioned bit of carpet as insulation on the top of the inner cardboard box, under the plastic bin that served to weatherproof the whole setup.
Rishi wouldn’t touch the shelter. More disdainful sniffs on the trail camera, more eating and running off.
Surely a mostly wild barn cat with a fully adapted double coat and twice the muscle of a small dog isn’t picky about what she naps on while she digests the Friskies I provide for her?
”Cats have opinions,” said my daughter.
Yesterday afternoon, I unfastened the two plastic bins and retrieved the bit of Mercedes wool carpet floor mat serving as lowly insulation, returning it to the floor of the inner cardboard box. Last night, Rishi took five rounds of naps inside the shelter and was far more comfortable hanging around for a couple of hours, even taking a minute for a classic barrel-roll back-scratch before heading out again on the rest of her patrol.
To close, a selection from Rudyard Kipling’s The Cat Who Walked By Himself,4 part of the delightful Just So Stories. This book isn’t as well known as The Jungle Book, but it’s a long-standing favorite at our house and was in frequent rotation during my childhood. (My Dad read to us while we washed up the dinner dishes.) It is probably due to Kipling that I adore the sounds of our rumpety bumpety language so very much.
…from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.
Read more about what a working cat is. Rest assured, she is no milquetoast housecat that I’ve cruelly consigned to the outdoors. She’s meaty and muscular, has a three-year rabies vaccine, and is spayed. She’s also got a thick double coat, something my cat-knowledgeable daughter tells me is a natural adaptation for cats who patrol the outdoors in cold weather.
After a week at our house in the late fall, Rishi had bailed for lodgings other than our garage, which I suspect smelled entirely too much like humans. Although were disappointed that she hadn’t hung around, we took solace in the fact that there was a vaccinated, spayed huntress in the neighborhood making a dent in the local vole population, even if we never spotted her again ourselves.
This is the type of shelter I made as an upgrade. The articles online say nothing about providing wool carpets.
For an audio version, here’s a wonderful reading on YouTube, complete with a crackling fire.
Rishi's no fool. She held out for the Mercedes swag.
Sometimes the outdoor cats just have their own ideas. We’ve had ferals over the past 50 years that liked to hang around, one even used a potato chip box wrapped in black plastic garbage bag as her winter house. Caught one who had 5 kittens to spay and vaccinate her with a long handled fishing net. Took her for spay, vet said try to keep her inside for 5 days to let the stitches heal. Set her up in a spare bathroom, and she lived the next 16 years indoors. We would leave the slider open, but she would never cross the threshhold to go out!