New Heated Home for Dawn the Abandoned Cat

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A few years ago one of our neighbors found a stray cat and brought it home. They named her Dawn. She was happy to be fed and petted by them which they did on a somewhat regular basis, but she stayed pretty thin. They also discovered she insisted on staying outside as much as possible.

These neighbors abruptly moved away and left the cat behind. We were dismayed. 

Dawn has made a few friends in the neighborhood and some of us started leaving food and water out for her.  Then we got a serious blast of winter wind and cold.  I couldn't stop thinking about Dawn spending her nights outside. 

I have cat allergies or I would have attempted to bring her in to our house. Online I found an inexpensive electrically heated outdoor cat shelter. I bought it and set the thing up in our front yard. Dawn refused to have anything to do with it for the first two days, but the next morning I came home and found her furry behind sticking out of the shelter's door. 

To say she's moved in and made herself comfortable would be an understatement. She loves the darned thing. 

I posted a photo of happily ensconced Dawn on Facebook and Instagram and mentioned she'd been abandoned by her former owners. This unleashed literally a couple hundred comments from people who were upset about the cat being abandoned.  My wife the therapist tells me the two big fears we all have are being engulfed or being abandoned. Based on the record number of responses to my post it looks like she's at least right about the second one.

A few people who had used similar cat outdoor shelters wrote to say they'd had the heating pad get wet from the rain. To avert that I've just built an auxiliary roof and raised base that I'm going to install tomorrow morning, just in time for the forecast heavy rains.

Maybe I worry too much, but I ended up building the auxiliary roof so large it looks like an aircraft carrier. In hopes it doesn't visually take over my front yard I'm painting it the dullest imaginable gray-brown.  


Here I am the painting the new roof in my studio tonight . Hope what I built does the trick








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