DIY Emergency Housing for Feral and Stray Cats during Winter. Quick and easy.

[Rorey]

15. Raccoons are our issue too.

We used to feed an old feral cat we named Cecil. We saw him around the neighborhood and he was looking pretty rough, so I started putting out food. When winter came we built him a house and I bought some of those radiant heat pet warming pads. I guess we took care of old Cecil for about two years.

There were times I saw a raccoon come up (security cameras) and Cecil would just sort of hang out while the raccoon ate his food. I mean, he'd let that raccoon, who could easily kill him, be just a couple of feet away, but he wouldn't come within six feet of us. It was kind of insulting. He never got any more tame than when we first met him. Then one day we stopped seeing him, so I guess he probably died. He looked very old.

During the time we were feeding Cecil, another cat showed up sporadically. We call him Mr. B. Just like Cecil, he has never let us near him.

This past summer another cat showed up. She had a collar, so I worked at coaxing her to come to me. I called the number on the collar, but the guy wouldn't return my calls. There was also an address on the collar, so I looked it up, found the owner of the house at that address, and looked him up on Facebook. There were pictures of the cat on his Facebook, along with her six kittens. He said he didn't want them and was going to take them to a shelter. I have a suspicion that the shelter wouldn't/couldn't take them, so he dumped them on this side of town. The cat ended up having three kittens on our back porch before I could get her in to get her spayed. As soon as I discovered the kittens, she moved them. They were hidden for two months, and then she started bringing them around for food. I got traps and trapped them, kept them in the house for a couple of weeks, and got them spayed/neutered. They were extremely unhappy and scared, so I let them go out the pet door one day. I continued to feed them inside, so they'd have to come in for food. So now they're about seven months old and our house is ridiculous. We've got a big cat tree in the dining room, and cat toys all over the place. I'm embarrassed to say how much money I've spent on these guys. The mother is of course as tame as can be. The kittens are very entertaining and two of them will sit on the foot rest of my recliner while I'm playing with them with their toys. My husband told me I should try petting them, but I told him that I thought the best tactic was to just be patient and wait until they "pet" me. I really don't think it'll be long for those two. The third kitten is a calico and has a way more skittish personality.

So we went from a no-pet house to having four cats. Ugh. I'm really more of a dog person. I just don't know about all of this.