Leben

In 2004 finally my dream to provide appropriate housing for our cats came true. The new house is large enough to accommodate both cats and people. The whole furniture is arranged for the purpose of animal husbandry with easy to clean furniture and flooring. Our cats, including male cats, have open access to all rooms. No one will be separated from the others apart from cats giving birth. Designing the garden was a great pleasure to me although it is not entirely finished yet.

The kittens are born in the bedroom where they can spend the first three weeks in a calm and stress-free atmosphere. Depending on the mood of the mother, their dad or aunts are allowed for short visits. As soon as it is time to explore and they want to leave the birthing box by themselves they move to the kitten-room that is also as our guestroom. In there they have a scratching post and hanging scratch baskets so that they can work on their climbing abilities. Bedroom and kitten-room can be closed with a lattice door if necessary but intervisibility with the rest of the cats is still given. Besides they have the whole second floor available.

Due to safety reasons the second floor is secured with lattice. The stairs are covered with ceramic tiles, are very steep and are open to one side. As soon as the kittens are able to climb the stairs the lattice doors remain open and the dangerous side of the stairs is secured with a white net so that they can climb up and down by themselves. In the first few nights they still sleep in the kitten-room together with their mother. From the age of 8 to 10 weeks they can move freely within the whole house and then things really take off.

Dining- and living room are open and whenever possible our cats prefer to use the door instead of the cat flap to get out into the garden. Should it be closed they have to use the cat flap that leads to the outside enclosure and from there they can get out to the fenced garden.

In our winter garden they have a further huge scratching post that is used briskly especially after an active night out in the garden or in bad weather. During the summer the windows of the winter garden are all kept open and thanks to the high position on the scratch post they can follow everything out in the garden or they can hide behind the thuja hedge to keep an eye on the others out in the garden.

In the outside enclosure I have many plants such as different kinds of bamboo, catnip, scarlet runner and lovage. So while the kittens stay outside to enjoy the fresh air they can also sniff at the exciting flavours out in nature.

From the outside enclosure cats and people can get out into the secured garden. The premises are secured on three sides with a 120 cm high wire-mesh fence and due to the high hedge of my neighbour on that side even with a 150 cm high fence. Furthermore at the height of 70 cm and 115 cm we have installed an electrical fence for small animals that is energized constantly. Until today only 3 out of our 9 cats have touched the fence yet and since then none of them has ever again touched it. It almost seems that they can “hear” the electricity. When someone from outside the garden talks to them they approach the fence carefully keeping a constant eye on the electrical fence.

Cats are very inventive: our cat Indy even managed to climb on top of the pavilion roof so I had to put plants on the pillars to prevent them from climbing. To do it quickly I planted annuals but in the autumn, thanks to the good climate, I will plant vine and further hardy clamberers.

The maple tree shaped like a huge ball enjoys great popularity and I hope that it will survive despite the numerous claw marks.

At first we did not believe that the three goldfish in the pond that we took over from the previous owners would survive the first summer. In the meantime they even spawned and I counted more than 20 of them. The cats love to sit at the pond watching them and it seems to be especially interesting at night.