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Cleaning a wooden kennel

post #1 of 5
11/15/09 at 6:25am
Thread Starter 
Hi folks -

This is my first post on the forum.

I've house-trained a ferally-born cat. He's neutered, flea-treated and vaccinated, lives in a well-appointed kennel in the garden and spends time in the house when we're at home. The rest of the time he's outside. (We live in suburbia.) He's good-natured and a wonderful house cat, but he's still got a strong feral instinct, so he earns his keep catching rodents.

This has led to a problem... Long story short, I'd noticed that he'd been avoiding his kennel for a week or so and when I went to investigate I found a very dead, disembowelled brown rat on the cat's bedding.

I've chucked the bedding and its gross-out contents, but now I consider the wooden kennel a health hazard for my cat.

How do you recommend I clean the kennel without soaking nasty chemicals into the wood and hazarding my cat's health in other ways?

Also, I'm assuming he'll start using the kennel again once its cleaned up. Is that a correct assumption?

regards
Samson
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post #2 of 5
11/15/09 at 7:25am
I would think cleaning it with an enzymatic cleaner would be a place to start. You can also use baking soda & warm water as a good general purpose cleaner/scrubber that won't harm your cat.
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post #3 of 5
11/15/09 at 9:56am
It's not really a good time of year for this, but any exposed wood should probably be resealed after you scrub it. You can also get Kilz paint - it can seal in a lot of things and make a water proof surface for you to be able to scrub later.


As for scrubbing... some bacteria is only killed by bleach. I hope you wore gloves and a mask when tossing out the rat remains, you may want to use them when cleaning too - no matter what you clean with just because dead animals usually have deadly bacteria growing in the carcass.
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post #4 of 5
11/15/09 at 3:19pm
Bleach is probably your best bet. Once it's dry it dissipates, no icky residue to cause problems later. But it's hard to kill germs on unsealed wood. Let it soak in really well.
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post #5 of 5
11/21/09 at 9:47am
Thread Starter 
Thanks very much to Willowy, strange_wings and stephanietx for the sensible advice. I think I'll go with the bleach option.

Once the stink dissipates I'm sure my cat will begin to sleep in the kennel again. He likes his luxuries.

best regards
Samson
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