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Our Cattery living
arrangements........
We do not believe in keeping our cats in cages. The only time we
would confine a cat would be for health reasons and even then the
quarantine area is a large segregated area in a separate room away from
the other cats.
Our girls have free run of the house except for the nurseries and kitten
room.
We
have three nurseries where a queen and her babies can
have the security and privacy they need. Mom and babies stay in the
nursery until the kittens are 8 weeks old. The nursery room is divided
into three separate nurseries which gives each queen more than enough room
to take care of her babies safe and secure from the other cats.
We also have a 15' x 16' kitten
playroom. When the kittens are 8 weeks old and fully litter trained they
are moved with their Mom from the nursery into the play room. The play
room is full of toys and scratch posts for them. Here they will grow and
play as their personalities develop and socialize with us and people who
come to visit until they are 12 weeks old. When the kittens
are spayed/neutered at 12 weeks old they are given the run of the house
until it's time to go to their new homes a week later. We tried a few
times letting the kittens have the run of the house at 8 weeks but they
were too intimidated by some of the adult girls hissing at them and
there were fights caused by the queen defending her kids so we decided
it's best to keep them segregated in the kitten room with their Mom for
a little longer.
For the studs we built netted, partitioned rooms, 4'W x
8'L x 8'H. Open males obviously cannot have
free run of the house because they will spray everywhere and jump on any
girl they can get their paws on. Then there's the issue of spraying. I'm sure anyone with un-neutered, open males knows all
about spraying. That's why I built the floors and side panels with melamine and I sealed the seams
with silicone.
All of our cats, including the boys, are handled every day and given lots of love and
attention. The girls like to help when we're using the computer, or
reading the paper, and they really come for affection when you're in the
bathroom. I guess they realize you're stuck and can't really go anywhere
for the moment. And they all come running for our laps in
the evening and watch TV. They don't like to help with the vacuuming
though!
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