beautiful stray

I've been feeding/watching a stray recently. (it might belong to someone, but eats at my house everyday) It's a young male, not fixed of course.
Has had a few scuffles with my two cats, but nothing serious, no injuries. Mostly verbal confrontations.

Today he let me pet him-a lot!

He's going to get fixed and released and I'm hoping he'll stay here, but if not, at least keep visiting.

I've been working on getting him to let me pet him for about two weeks. Finally today he gave up and let me touch him, but then he left for "home".

I'm so glad he's tame, he's very pretty too.

Congratulations on taming him! That's a pretty big accomplishment! Maybe he does have a home somewhere after all?

This time of year, when it's getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere, I always feel for the cats who need shelter. I'm thinking about talking to our neighbor about making some shelterboxes for our three.

I currently have two cats that live outside. Tigger who is 11 and refuses to come in and Cricket who is 3 and wants in and out when SHE decides

They have heated beds in the potting shed. It's not as good as being inside all the time but it's better than nothing at all.

I know the inside/outside debate is a hot one. But some cats and some people just can't have the inside only situation.

If you like, I can tell you how I made their beds and where I bought the heated pad for them.

here he is...

I don't see a picture

Could you please pass on those instructions? I would hate to see these guys go without shelter in the winter. They're such wonderful kitties!

the pic was there a minute ago. I am definitely computer illiterate. (anyway, he's white with cow splotches, like a holstein dairy cow, and the spots are gray tiger, he's beautiful)


Now for the heated beds
I took a med. sized dog crate, remove the door. (this size house two if they'll share)
put newspaper or straw, not hay in the bottom.
then some blankets and a heated pad. Mine is electric cause it's not out in the weather, but you can get the NASA type "space blankets" which I understand work well.

You can get an old sleeping bag at the thrift store or goodwill and put the whole thing inside it or wrap a big blanket around it to block the air.

sounds kinda plain or crude but it does work.

trying the pic again

Oh! He's beautiful! I love the length of his body!

We actually have a medium sized dog crate from when our dog was younger that would probably work nicely. I think that one of "our" cats is actually owned, since he's so overweight (and I don't mean "normal weight" I mean "overweight") but the two girls could really do with somewhere to go in the winter.

I'm not sure whether or not we have hookup for electricity in our garage, but minus the heating elements, we could do everything else and still have a relatively warm shelter for the cats. I would like to put something in the bushes in front of the duplex because I think that's where they usually sleep as it is.