Catio

Forums:

catio viva.png

 

Just finished building this. The cats are indoor/outdoor, but we want them in at night. We have bobcats, coyotes, cougars, and neighbors' dogs to contend with, so a catio was in order. I put about 50 hours into it over a month and a half.

Good work.   Catios are all the rage in Portland right now.

Did you use a kit?   Some people order chicken coop kits and customize them for cats.

Does anyone have a fatio?

As we rode out to...

 

Interesting on many levels

I can't fathom a scenario where I'd place a giant wire & wood animal-outcropping to the side of my house. When cats don't come back, the SPCA hands you a new one. 

That being said, nice construction job. Looks solid.

And you can always convert it to an in-law apartment when the cats move out

Nice job!

cats will be stoked. I had never seen something like this until we were looking at houses and one of them had it, seemed sensible enough.

Surfdead that's so cool! Now I want to see a pic w/ your cats in there! 

There is a catio tour in Portland in September: http://www.feralcats.com/catio

 

Nice, Surfdead!

Nice work. My cat would likely show zero appreciation. She would be like you mean I can go outside but I can't murder small animals? Dafuq? 

... 

i-will-kill-you-and-then-i-will-hide-your-corpse-under-my-catio_0.jpg

pussy palace

 

Lol to all! They mostly use it at night - I too would like a pic of them in it. I looked at some kits but none were quite right, so built it from the picture in my head. 

Nice work! Looks like a place a cat would love. 

We lost a cat to coyotes here in Portland, the cat loved to be outside, but a couple times a year a pack of coyotes seems to come around and feast on cats, chickens and ducks and then move on, so a catio makes sense to me.

Surf, If you lived in Silicon Valley, you could rent out the Catio for about 4k/month..

We have lost a cat and couple of chickens to coyotes too, but I still let the cats out.  I feel their mental health and quality of life is the worth the risk and if they get eaten by a coyote, its part of the circle of life.   I had one indoor-outdoor cat that was still going out after dark and wandering the neighborhood when she died of natural causes at 20 years old. 

We have a friend with a giant catio that takes up half her back yard.   She is almost a crazy cat lady and takes in feral cats and hard to place felines and the catio is good for that.

So happy my wife isn't on the zone she wants one of these, but our cat is indoor she just wants to put the cat box out there. 

The cats usually roam freely during the day.

Watch out the Trump folks might reach out to you to cage migrant children

catio and cat 2 mod.png

Cat in catio.

Get a hold of John Kadlecki and you can have a cat play date and a lil jam session.

Just be careful you will be possibly putting your life on the line.

Your cats have nice digs.

Putting pussy on a pedestal.

Never heard of such a thing. Just for your cat ? WTF  Must be a west coast thing. That birdcage wouldn't stand a chance if you had any kind of actual tasty morsels like chickens or goats, but what kind of self respecting cougar or coyote is gonna bother with a cat in the lockup ? Seems like a lot just for cats,  maybe you can also do wild animal rescues,  for squirrels that fall out of trees n shit.

Ya know for all the effort, a screened in porch you can use accomplishes the same thing.

 

Cat wanted it. 

Cat used Jedi mind. 

Catio. 

It's actually pretty strong. A cougar could prob. break in, but not instantaneously - pretty sure I'd wake up before that. Don't think a coyote, dog, or bobcat could. It has a few differences from a screened porch - dirt/grass floor, cat sleeping shelf.

bobcat or coyote could dig under that no prob, but IME rural critters are more tenacious than suburban critters...when you are the only home around you're a main target, if you are in the burbs or live in a country "community" with neighbors nearby, the animals have easier pickins than digging under something like that

Looks like there’s a cat door to the home, so if any predators did try and breach the catio the felines would find safety in the home. cool set up. 

As Coyote is digging under the walls I hope puss puss has enough brains to get the fuck inside and lock the door

>>>>>bobcat or coyote could dig under that no prob

When we set up the new chicken coop in the front yard, we first dug down around a foot and put down a layer of wire cloth, which we then attached to the frame of the coop.   Eventually, mice were able to find ways around it, but it does give us an extra sense of security about larger critters like raccoons and coyotes. 

My brother lives in center part of ABQ and he had a coyote jump over a six foot adobe wall into his patio and kill all his chickens one night.

Puss wouldn't even need to lock the door, no coyote is going to fit though it  - although some cat doors do lock automatically and only open for the designated pet (via their microchip), not a bad idea  to keep out the pesky racoons. 

 I feel their mental health and quality of life is the worth the risk and if they get eaten by a coyote, its part of the circle of life.   I had one indoor-outdoor cat that was still going out after dark and wandering the neighborhood when she died of natural causes at 20 years old<<<

That's the way I look at it as well ... although was recently thinking about things a little differently if I somehow find myself with a new younger cat / kitten vs. at the end with my 18 year old cat who was on death's doorstep in her final year & didn't venture very far from the door in a relatively safe spot.

The dirt floor is underlain with mesh attached to the bottom plate. Nothing is going to dig through it.

I believe the catio has become a necessary item in these parts if you have cats that are part of the family. Our neighbor let their cat onto a second floor balcony and a cougar ate it while she was watching  Also, an adult male cougar was killed by a vehicle at the bottom of our road.

Is Portlandia still in production?  This seems like an episode waiting to happen.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a song called It's All The Rage In Portland.

our new cat is a classic scaredy cat.

runs from his own shadow.

getting more adventurous going outside.

he is a poor jumper...or is near sighted or has a lame leg...?

its a month away from 'coon season with the fig tree.

we do get coyotes, even downtown.

last neighborhood cat was a tough street cat, he disappeared not long after we moved in...

 

 

 

We had a huge, and I mean big, red-tailed hawk in the yard yesterday.  It caught a squirrel and sat there eating it in the backyard for about a 1/2 an hour.  No doubt that thing could take out a small cat.

There is a bald eagle's nest not far from here as well.