Unleash the Beast?

**Jasper&Bailey** · 20th June 2010, 12:46 PM

Hi guys, got a question for all you peop's with 'Kitty Kompounds'. (It's a long one!!)
I will 'soon' be tackling my Garden (bearing in mind it took two and a half years to do the house and we ended up married and living with parents at first!) but I dont want to do all the garden and then wish I had looked into a secure area in which to let the Boys out into. This is where you all come in....
I live in an area which means the Cats absolutley cannot be let out properly but I am considering building what I call a Kitty Kompound but my only concern is that once theyve had a taste for this freedom they might want to be let out into the play-pen at times thats aren't convenient, for instance if we're going out. I can't allow them to come and go in and out when we're not in because I can just imagine (me being paranoid) someone waiting for them to work out into the pen and stealing them even tho it's virtually impossible to see into our garden. As Im writing this Im realising that the risks are incredibly minimal but I just love them both sooooo much, I couldn't live with myself if something happened to them.
Do your cats meow at the door to go out into there play area or are they happy just to go when you want them to and happy to come back in again, as at the minute the boys couldnt be better, they're kind of scared of the front door and runaway when someone knocks or walks in, they do however come to the door to greet us as we come in but have never attempted to leave or even looked like wanting to do so. They don't meow at the doors or windows or anything but I'd just like them to be able to play in the fresh air. Im so torn!
Please don't be concerned for my boys, they're not 'locked up' as it's a large 3 bed house and every door is open, they have every toy imaginable and get played with all the time, plus my wife only works 4 short days and she comes home at lunch on those days.

**Menolly** · 20th June 2010, 06:43 PM

We too live in an area where letting the cats out would be impossible (we are on a wide residential road which is supposed to be 30mph but most traffic seems to hare down at 40+).
Our three have the run of the house, but we also have a deck with a pergola over it, to which they have access via a cat flap. The pergola is fully meshed and the gate that leads into the garden has a padlock, so cannot be accessed from the outside, unless the gate is unlocked. Our garden is not overlooked.
The deck and pergola arrangement is accessed by humans from the breakfast room (we have a stable door there). We also have a completely enclosed side access which leads to the shed that my husband uses as a workshop and effectively, the side access, shed, deck and pergola form a massive "cat compound".
When we leave for work, the cats can either choose to go out onto the deck and if it rains, they can either come back into the house or (more often than not) they camp out in the shed. My husband is really neat when he is working, so there is never anything left out that might harm the cats.
We love this setup - it means that, weather permitting, we can sit out with the cats and they can enjoy the fresh air in safety.
I guess if anyone WANTED to get in, they could wire-cutter their way through the mesh, but if they got into the house, they'd be deafened by the alarm system!

Prior to the pergola & deck arrangement, we had a cat run attached to the shed - this was a simple construction which was, effectively, single storey (from a cat's point of view, that is, it was a little over three feet high) and "wrapped around" two walls of the shed in an L-shape. The access then was via a catflap from the shed to the run and there was a mesh fence and gate from the shed to the wall of the house, with a meshed roof (so once again, the cats were effectively enclosed). We built the deck and pergola arrangement after winter storms had weakened one end of the cat run and GabbyCat got out!

I'll try to post some pix of our setup later, to give you some idea of what I mean (difficult to describe), but lots of people here have built similar things. The cats really love being "outside" - they get to swear at the pigeons and squirrels and they watch the birds on the bird feeder with GREAT interest!!

**H&SWells** · 20th June 2010, 08:04 PM

as we are very much still in the planning stage i would love to see pictures - it sounds absolutely ideal and may well be a better route for us than a std cat run.

**Karena** · 20th June 2010, 10:14 PM

We are able to let Simba have freedom of the garden but he only has it when I'm around. If I'm out or at the end of the day in the evening he has to come indoors. My cat flap only works one way, and that's coming in but he can't get out through it. He has learnt this and never tries to get out through it but uses it to come in without hesitation. If he wants to go out he stands by the back door and cries for me to open it for him but if I walk away he doesn't keep asking. In answer to your question, yes he does ask sometimes to go out when I won't let him but I ignore him. He doesn't keep asking and soon finds himself something to do indoors. It really isn't a problem. He gets plenty of time in the garden and I don't think he is being deprived when I bring him in. I'm sure yours will learn that they have limited time in their outdoor pen and be content to come in when they have to. These MCs seem to love human company more than anything anyway so I don't think they would want to be out there on their own for long. Even if the back door is left open all day, like it was today, if we all come inside you can be sure a few minutes later Simba will follow.

**Menolly** · 21st June 2010, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by H&SWells

as we are very much still in the planning stage i would love to see pictures - it sounds absolutely ideal and may well be a better route for us than a std cat run.

I've put a couple of pix on my Gallery - I'm sure, though, that my husband has some better ones on his PC, so I'll have a look tomorrow and post some more.

We bought a hexagonal 6' high "Playpen" about 14 years ago, when Gabby was 6 months old and Widget just a kitten. We sited it down the garden, put a nice tree trunk, various toys, water bowl and litter tray in it and then carried the cats down to it.

Widget thought it was great - climbed to the top and hung upside-down yelling "look at me, Ma!!!"

Gabby howled that it was "a vile prison" and wanted to know what she had done to deserve being shut up in it!

We dismantled it in the end and used the parts for the small run that I mentioned in my post.