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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 four nurseries where a queen and her babies can
have the security and privacy they need. These pictures are of one of
the nurseries I built in the master bedroom. It measures 4' wide by 8'
long. Mom and babies stay in the
nursery until the kittens are 8 weeks old. We have 3 more nurseries of
similar size built in a spare bedroom. Each of these nurseries give the 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 almost 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 getting too stressed out 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. All of our queens that are not about
to give birth or with kittens are given free run of the house.
For the studs we built netted, partitioned rooms, 4'W x
8'L x 8'H in our attached heated garage. 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. 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.
The left photo shows all 3 rooms.
Center photo is the middle room with Eddie and Pina in it. The right
photo is the far right room and it is Butter's room. You can't see their
food and water because it is on the floor near the door where I'm
standing.
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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