Cat rehoming advice

Dixie Chick

Hi all,

I am in a situation where i need to rehome my 2 adult cats. Currently they are indoor and outdoor cats, spend most the day outside unless its bad weather and sleep inside at night and generally come in and out the flap and mooch around at their own leisure.

However i need to rehome them, and my sister has offered to take them but as outside cats with access to a shed where we will put a cat flap and Ill set it up so thier beds and toys etc are all there for them,

I just have a few questions though

1) I know ill need to keep them locked into the shed, is a week enough?
2) While i am there after maybe a day or two, can i let them out to smell around and get a feel of the place
3) They have never used a litter tray, always gone outside, do i need to them them a box each with seperate litters for the time they will be inside?

Thats it for now really.:(

Glowing

Locking your cats in a shed (in this heat) for a week or more sounds terribly cruel to me. And in theory you should keep your cats in for a month or more when they move house!

What happens in winter when the weather drops below freezing, will a shed be enough to keep them warm then? How is your sister going to monitor their health etc if they just live outside in a shed?

Can you not look for another home for them? Or surrender them to the DSPCA where at least you know they'll go to a 'home' and not a shed.

boomerang

It depends on the shed - if it's a wooden shed, they're going to be WAY too hot in there at this time of year and as Glowing says, there's no insulation so they'll freeze in there in the winter.

Plus if they are very friendly and used to a lot of handling and interaction with you, they'll really miss that as outside cats if your sister isn't into cats?

A good rule of thumb for cats is a tray for every cat, plus a spare. Put them in the corners out of the way of foot traffic so the cat feels safe. Buy the biggest ones you can afford - they'll be more likely to use them and they'll be easier to keep clean.

I recently got two cats (outdoor semi wild cats) from a rescue. So I'm with you on this issue. But from lifelong experience, cats wont need to be taught to use a tray. They will always go where they can bury it. So even a wild cat who has never seen a tray before, will use it, if it's the only place he can bury his... things.

Is there an option of giving them a room that they can stay in? We are lucky that our sitting room has patio doors into the garden, we gave this room over completely to the two cats when they arrived. The shelter told us a shed would have been more ideal, but we didn't have one and I'm glad for it now, because I was able to bond with the cats to the extant that they wanted (one of them hides from us, he just says "put out the food, otherwise eff off" and the second is now a lap cat).

You are doing your cats a good turn to rehome them within the family rather than stick them into a rescue. Are you sure your sister can't accommodate them in the home? My two outdoor cats have been great, actually, they have done zero damage to the furniture and only ripped and ate a €1.99 doormat.

About letting them out, well, it does depend on the cat. My grandmother had a cat who she dumped with my parents when she went on holiday. The cat was evil incarnate. We tried to keep her in but she was tearing our dogs to bits. This was a city cat, and we lived in the country. My mother had had enough of the cat, (she kept attacking us kids too, and not in a playful way), threw her outside, and my gran's cat had the best holiday of her life. She came back with every type of wildlife in her jaws. Once a cat knows where the good things are (comfort and food) they will return. If your neighbour has better food, you might not see your cat again. However yours are already tame, so if they become someone else's pet, you can't help that, at least they are ok, but they will come back to the shed as long as the food is good.

There is no magic answer to how long the cats have to be kept in. The shed is not ideal in this weather, the timing is bad. If the food is good, then the cats should come back anyway. Maybe feed them outside the shed door several times a day. I know my two cats wont leave the garden cause they think food might be coming.

Hats off to you rehoming and not sticking them in a rescue or having them PTS. Best of luck with them, and always here with advice if you like, because I am going through the same, letting my new cats out for the first time!

Also about cats being outside in the last two winters we had - Christmas Eve 2009 I chucked the cat in on top of my boyfriend, my and my brother were talking after everyone had gone to bed.... we didn't want to evict the cat in -10 degrees, I went in, woke my boyfriend and said he could have Miss Cat or my two budgies, he chose Cat. She woke him at 5am and leaped out the window. But last year Cat was very happy to stay in till about 1am, then she did want to go out. No matter how cold. She has a back kitchen, not heated, that she can sleep in. Cats like to be outside at night. My two are showing me that now.

It's also hilarious to see little cat paw prints all across my mother's horse's rug every morning. Either Cat walks around a lot, or other cats are coming to sleep on Will too!! Too cute. Cats and horses get on great.