Building a cat shelter: windows, doors, and feeder

More progress on the new cat house. (Previous post: roofing.)

I installed the Lexan clear plastic windows, the window trim, and decorative muntins:

I also installed cat doors in the front and back, plus ventilation grilles:

The vents can be closed in winter to keep it nice and toasty inside:

The cat door on the front is held open with a short bungee cord, to encourage the cats to enter. Eventually, once they get used to going through the door, the cord will be removed:

I installed the side door on the feeder part, with a continuous hinge, gate latch, and handle:

Inside the feeder, I installed a 2″ pipe to take the dry cat food from the dispenser to a metal dish (cake pan). Here you can see the tube (with excess pipe at the top) with the central shelf removed:

I made a drawer on top of the shelf, with notches for the tube:

Here’s the shelf re-installed, with the drawer pulled out. This will make it easy to refill the feeder:

The drawer pushed back in. I’ll store spare food in the space to the right:

Here you can see the nozzle of the food dispenser positioned above the end of the tube:

The food drops down the tube into the dish:

I also attached the signs to the facades with construction adhesive and screws from the back:

I added several roller catches to hold the front of the facades on:

I had planned to have the facades hinge down, but the roller catches seem to hold it securely, so I’ll just remove the front entirely when accessing inside the facades (which will be very rare; it’s basically just a conduit for power cords):

Here’s the (almost) completed front, with the windows, facades, signs, etc:

Front view:

The exterior is now basically complete, other than some decorative touches… which is probably the next step. It’ll be a week or two before I can get back to that, though. Stay tuned!

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