The temperatures has been below freezing over the past few days, so our feral cats have been hanging around home more, enjoying their heated shelters. This is a time-lapse from the last few days of inside their main cat house.
Cat update for week ending October 24
As mentioned in yesterday’s Flock Friday, it has been below freezing the last few days, which of course means the feral cats have been hanging around home more, snuggling in their heated shelters.
For today’s Caturday, a few pictures of snuggles, and several GIFs. I really restrained myself from uploading too many snuggle pics; at the end I have a summary GIF with 78 pictures, and I think at least half of them are of cute snuggling.
So let’s get a couple of those out of the way to start:
Here’s a GIF of Porcini and Poppy snuggling, that I posted earlier in the week on my personal blog:
As usual, Pommie has been spending most of her time at the cabins:
Three cats inside the cat house:
Another snuggle GIF:
Porcini and Pommie outside:
I flushed out Porcini and Poppy when visiting the cat house to reset the cameras; they watched me from a safe distance:
Three cats; they look like they’re telling secrets, but are actually going after some bonus food I tossed there when refilling their dispenser:
Four cats at breakfast time:
Three cats in the feeder:
Four cats again:
And four cats inside the house, which is rather unusual:
A little more snuggling… because three cats:
Porcini and Poppy:
Cats playing on the awning and jumping down from a tree:
A GIF of that playtime:
A screenshot of my cams app showing 3 cats (deck, feeder, and house):
Later, four cats (cabin, feeder, two in the house):
And five cats (deck, cabin, feeder, two in the house):
A time-lapse GIF of several days inside the cat house:
And finally, the aforementioned summary GIF of 78 photos from this week, if you haven’t already overdosed on snuggles… plus glimpses of Poppa, Paladout by the pond, and more that I didn’t include above:
Flock Friday for October 23
Fabulously freezing Flock Friday, friends! (The temperature was below freezing overnight.)
A shot from the new coop cam of three chickens on their favorite roost by the window:
A GIF of a fourth flying from the other roosts, and knocking the camera off:
A freeze-frame of landing on top of another chicken, causing that chaos:
The camera is magnetically attached to a metal plate wedged under the window screen; here it’s just hanging by its wire:
The ducks on the back lawn, rooting for bugs:
A time-lapse GIF of a chicken flying up to the roost and back down again:
Chickens hanging out on top of logs etc:
A bunch more pics of the chickens:
Kiwi is still looking quite scruffy, but you can see the new feathers coming in:
Ditto with Buffy:
I had a cunning idea, to make it easier to see if the pop doors are open or closed in the dark: I added reflective tape on the pop door:
And on the outside:
The old coop too (the horizontal one acts as an extra indicator, only being visible when the door is closed):
Here are roosting chickens again, with the light on:
A little spooky after the light goes off (it’s on a timer):
As it gets darker, the night-vision of the cam turns on:
The pop door closed; now clearly visible via the reflective strips:
I can see the state of the door outside too, via the reflective strips:
In the old coop, door open:
Door closed:
The ducks have recently been hanging out on the bank to the left of the pond deck:
It started raining, so the ducks came up to the lawn to hunt for worms that come to the surface during precipitation:
A GIF of a Rouen running up the bank, using her wings to assist:
Sassa doing the same:
She kept on going:
Exploring more of the lawn:
Summary: building the duck house
I just added a project summary of designing and building the duck house. It is permanently available in my project pages, but here is a copy as a blog post too.
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A project to build a house and feeder for ducklings and ducks on our pond. For weekly posts on the ducks themselves, check out the ducks category of the blog, and/or the weekly Flock Friday blog posts, that cover the ducks, chickens, and wild birds.
This is a summary of the plans, design, construction, and installation of the duck house, with links to the individual blog posts about it.
January 2019
We have a nice large pond at the homestead, and enjoyed the occasional visit by migrating wild ducks. In January 2019 we decided we wanted permanent residents, and ordered four ducklings for delivery in May. So, it was time to get started designing a house for them. Here’s where it would be situated:
February 2019
My custom design for a duck house:
Starting construction, one of the first steps was to cut the floor and wall panels:
Lots of progress on assembling the walls and roof:
March 2019
A bunch of tweaks and trim work:
Building the doors, including the innovative four-part maintenance door:
April 2019
Starting to paint the duck house:
The house includes LED and heat lamp lighting and other electrical features, including Wi-Fi:
I added vinyl tiles to help waterproof it:
May 2019
With the construction complete, I next hand-excavated the location next to the pond:
Some preparation for ducklings (and chicks):
Introduction of the first ducklings to the duck house:
June 2019
I also introduced a new weekly series on the blog, Flock Friday (that’s a baby Bert on the left):
(Check out the ducks category, or in ascending order, or the weekly Flock Friday blog posts, for more pictures of ducklings.)
July 2019
An addition to the duck house was covered in one of the Flock Friday posts: adding the feeder tube:
When the first ducklings were getting old enough to go in the pond, I made and installed a ramp for them:
That’s it for now. This page will be updated with any future enhancements to the duck house.
Aerial photos in October
I flew my drone today; the first time since the end of August. Previous flights this year included June, April, and March. This time, some nice fall foliage.
A view of the shop, veggie garden, chicken runs, back lawn, pond, flowerbeds, etc:
Closer to the pond:
One reason for this flight was to get an aerial shot of the path to the duck house; I have a hose used to fill the duck’s waterer, which is also arranged as a possible edge of the path. Hard to see in this picture, though:
Over to the flowerbeds; you can see a fallen tree from the big storm that contributed to the wildfires earlier (we’ll cut it up and remove it soon):
Closer:
Part of the field and flowerbeds. The long grass in the field looks like nice soft velvet:
From higher up:
I landed the drone to change the battery, then took off again; Rory wasn’t thrilled about that:
Finally, a few shots of trees, to capture the fall foliage:
Porcini snuggles with Poppy in the feral cat house
A short clip of Porcini slowly settling on top of her very patient mother.
Added cats summary page
I have added a page on the Yellow Cottage Homestead website to summarize the history of our feral cats. Here is a copy of that as a blog post, but I will update the page over time.
When visiting the site, you can easily access the Cats page by clicking on the “hamburger” icon to the left of the title at the top, which will slide out a sidebar with links to the about page, cats page, projects page, projects summary, and post archive options, categories, tags, and more.
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We have two groups of feral cats: outdoor-only feral cats, and indoor-only feral shop cats.
Outdoor cats
On August 30, 2017, we saw what we initially thought was a rat on our front steps… but on closer inspection turned out to be a kitten. Watching for a while, we saw that four kittens were living under our front steps. Fortunately we were in the process of adopting Paladin, our pet cat, so we had some kitten food on hand. We put some out for the kittens. An hour or so later, their mother turned up, having caught a mouse for them to eat. She was happy to eat the food too; no doubt she was very hungry, feeding and still nursing her kittens, not to mention feeding herself.
Read the first blog post about the surprise kittens for the introduction to them; here’s a picture of three of the kittens:
Here’s the mother cat, who we named Poppy, with a couple of her kittens:
Over time, we improved the feeding and living facilities for them, with a feeding station, a raccoon-proof feeder, a heated shelter, a custom-designed-and-built combo shelter and feeder, and more heated spaces. For details of those, check out the Cat House project summary page.
An important step with feral cats is to get them spayed and neutered. Otherwise, a family of five cats could grow exponentially to hundreds of cats, breeding out of control. To learn more about that, check out the posts on pre-baiting the cats (i.e. getting them used to eating from un-set traps), the actual process of TNR: Trap, Neuter, Return, and the followup a week later.
The TNR post also introduces the cats’ names, since that was when we first learned what their genders were (other than the mother, of course).
We have Poppy, the mother; Porcini, Portabella aka Bella, and Pomegranate aka Pommie, all female; plus Potato aka Spud, the only male. See the TNR post for close-up pictures of each.
The cats have a comfy routine of turning up for breakfast, often sleeping much of the day in the various heated shelters, with food available throughout the day, then hunting at night. They help us keep the rodent population under control around the outside of our house, and provide daily entertainment with their cuteness, but remain feral cats, wary of humans.
You can read the cat posts in chronological order, to see how it all started. And also read the weekly Caturday blog posts for updates on them.
Shop cats
We got the shop cats on July 20, 2015, from the Multnomah County Animal Services. They have a “kitties for hire” program, where feral cats off the street, that are too wild to become pets, can be given a productive life helping keep workshops and barns free from rodents. They’re basically employees: we provide a comfortable home, food, water, etc for them, and in exchange they catch any rodents foolish enough to venture into our shop.
When we first got them, we kept them in a couple of large dog crates, joined together, to give them a comfortable enclosed space to get used to. After a while, we let them out into the rest of the shop. We decided to keep them indoor-only, in part to avoid wildlife from going into the shop, and in part to protect them.
Since we got them before I started this blog, here’s a picture of Pepper soon after we got her, in the aforementioned dog crate. Her estimated age was about five months old:
Pansy was an estimated one year old when we got her:
Since then, they’ve settled into their routines. Pepper has a cozy nest on top of some shelving in the front of the shop, with lots of padding, and even a heating pad to keep her toasty in the colder months:
Meanwhile, Pansy watches over the back half of the shop from her nest hidden behind some chairs, also with a padded bed and heating pad:
Each has their own food, water, and litter box. The two halves of the shop are separated by a wall, but there’s a cat door, so they can access the other half if they wish, though they usually stick to their own domain.
They have a pretty cozy life, periodically paying their rent with a dead rodent left as an offering for us.
Cat update for week ending October 17
A skunk, possum, and raccoon visited the cats, plus several in-person sightings of cats, and much cuteness and snuggles. It’s Caturday!
I think this is the first time I’ve seen a skunk visit the cat house. While watching it, I was fervently hoping that nothing would startle it; I’d never get that stink out:
A couple of hours later, a possum also visited:
Porcini and Pommie at the cabins:
An in-person sighting of Porcini when refilling the bird feeders:
I put an Eero Wi-Fi router back in the breezeway, so am now able to access that camera again. Without it, I can’t get that cam to load. Here’s Spud; he spends pretty much every night in that cabin:
Porcini and Pommie again:
Three cats:
Two cats inside the cat house. I had a spiel last time about the SD card for the cat house cam not working, but a few days later it started working again. So no need to replace it after all:
A screenshot of my cam viewing app, showing a cat in the cabins and two in the house:
Another screenshot, showing a cat outside the cabins, one in the house, and a possum in the feeder:
A raccoon invading the house; fortunately nobody was home at the time:
Here’s a sped-up GIF:
That sort of invasion worries me, as if a cat were on the top level when a raccoon came in, it’d be trapped, since the front and back doors are on the lower level. So, I have bought another cat door, the same as downstairs, and plan to install it in the middle of the back wall, probably on Wednesday, weather permitting (Sunday and Wednesday are my weekend days, but tomorrow looks like it’ll be rainy). Hopefully the cats don’t get upset at me modifying their house.
Poppy and Poppa:
Poppy wanted breakfast, so went around Poppa; he just sat there, without reacting. I’m glad he behaves nicely with our ferals:
Cat snuggles:
A raccoon approached the cabin where Pommie was sleeping; she was alert, but didn’t move, and the raccoon retreated. Phew:
A live sighting of Porcini sitting on an overturned bench, and Pommie drinking from the stream, with the cat house in the background:
A GIF of Spud running into the breezeway and up to the cabin:
I spotted Porcini in the kitchen garden (and she spotted me):
I also saw her on the bench by the fountain garden:
More cute snuggles:
Here’s a GIF of Porcini stretching, licking, and snuggling with Poppy:
A shorter, more smooth variation; can you stand the cuteness?!
Finally, a summary GIF of this week’s 87 photos; lots more great shots not included above, including cameos of Rory and me:
Flock Friday for October 16
Some hummingbirds, ducks, chickens, a jay, and even a cat. Plus some sad news. It’s Flock Friday.
Seven hungry hummingbirds on a rainy day:
Did you see the slow motion video of the hummingbirds?
A time-lapse animated GIF of ducks having breakfast:
Ducks on the edge of the lawn:
Sassa standing tall and stretching her wings:
Ducks on the lawn; I love Rémy’s green head:
On the lawn:
A wide-angle shot of the ducks, with the brown gazebo and two chicken coops in the background:
Sassa flapping her wings again:
A cheeky Steller’s Jay in the duck house:
Ducks in the pond:
Concluding my recent saga on the ChickenGuard pop door opener for the new chicken coop, I bought and installed a replacement unit, so it now works reliably, at last. While this has been quite a hassle, I’m very pleased with the customer service of the manufacturer — they were very responsive in trying to help, and even sent a front panel (with electronics) and another motor, at no charge, even after I told them I replaced it, so I’d have a spare:
Speaking of the chickens, here are some pictures of damp and scraggly chickens, still going through their annual molting:
Merida in a nesting box:
Back to the ducks; you may have seen some of these on my personal blog:
Clara showing off her wing:
Ducks on the lawn:
Sven stretching:
Heading back to the pond:
I mentioned sad news… it’s Sven. I discovered him floating dead at the back of the pond yesterday morning. Looking at my cam footage, it looks like he died on Wednesday. No sign of injury or attack, so my best guess is that he may have choked on something. So now we’re down to 12 ducks; 3 male, 9 female. We have that many to allow for attrition, but it still makes us sad when we lose one.
Think seven hummingbirds was a lot? How about ten:
A GIF from that Live Photo; can you spot all ten?
I moved one of the cameras in the new coop:
Did you see the time-lapse of a day in the coop from that vantage point?
Ducks in the rain:
Paladout investicated the duck house:
Eww, that isn’t food:
The ducks were very curious too:
Finally, a summary GIF of 116 photos from this week (excluding the GIFs and a few others). Including as a link instead of embedding, since it’s fairly large.
24 hours in the new chicken coop in 24 seconds
I moved one of the cameras in our new chicken coop to above the nesting boxes. Here is a time-lapse of a day in the coop from that vantage point, with a surprise egg bonus.