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Our Cattery living
arrangements........
We do not believe in keeping our cats in little 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 kitten areas.
  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 far left nursery is
6'x7'. The one on the right is 5'x8'. We have another one upstairs that
is 6'x18'.
 This is the kitten playroom,
currently occupied by Brandy and her six kittens (it's nap time). The
kindergarten is 14' x 24'. The smaller 5x8 nursery is what you see
in the upper left corner.
When the
kittens are 8 weeks old and fully litter trained they are moved with
their Mom from the nursery into this play room.
The play room is full of toys and scratch
posts for them. There is even a bird cage with love birds to keep them amused! Here they will
grow and play as their personalities develop
and socialize with us and people who come to visit until it's time to go to their new
homes. We tried a few times letting the kittens have the run of the
house but they were intimidated by some of the adult girls running
around so we decided it's best to keep them segregated with their Mom.
We do occasionally have 2 litters in the playroom with their Moms and
that works out ok.
For the boys we built three netted, partitioned rooms, 4'W x
8'L x 10'H on the glass enclosed front porch. 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. Here are some pictures....(I know, I
still need to paint the wood trim). That's Cognac on the left and
Sambuca in the middle and on the right. Between them is the middle room
(not shown) where Butters lives.
 
I'm sure anyone with un-neutered, open males knows all
about having easily cleanable areas for
them. That's why I built the floors and side panels using 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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