Building a cat shelter: a summary

I thought I’d follow up on the new cat house, with a post summarizing the building process. Kinda like an old-fashioned clip show on TV.

Each step includes a link to the original post, which includes more details and photos. Even if you’ve been following along, you might find this retrospective interesting, and might like to check out the individual posts again, as with the new theme on the blog, you’ll be able to see larger photos.

February 2018

Any successful project starts with a plan; surprisingly fairly similar to what I ended up building:

Construction started with the floor, naturally enough:

I did refine the plans a bit, though things changed a bit more during construction:

The walls were next, with insulation sandwiched between plywood sheets:

More walls, and platforms:

The roof also has insulation (on the shelter side):

March 2018

The entire front of the shelter side can be slid open, to maintain the interior:

April 2018

The cat house was designed with an old west theme, so has fun facades at the top:

Although the walls are just sheets of plywood, I added some extra trim to make it look like board-and-batten siding:

May 2018

I didn’t do any work on the cat house in May, but I did post an update on the feral cats in their old feeder and shelter:

June 2018

Back to work on it, I started painting:

And more painting:

And finished painting:

Next was roofing, leveraging skills from building the chicken coop:

July 2018

Then adding the windows, doors, and feeder:

At last, after some final touches of decorations, electrical, and carpet, it was time for installation:

It didn’t take long for the cats to explore the new structure. They started eating there very quickly:

And have explored the shelter part:

August 2018

An exciting development was a couple of cats sleeping in the shelter, though only for a couple of nights so far:

I added a camera to the feeder side, and tweaked the food pipe:

Finally, I’ll leave you with this:

No doubt I’ll follow up with more photos of the cats and their new house in the future. Follow the blog to see new posts.

3 thoughts on “Building a cat shelter: a summary

    1. Thanks. We are planning to remodel the shop bathroom sometime, and eventually the back of the shop. But my next project will probably be compost bins, then a duck house (both of which will be much simpler).

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