Thread: Outdoor cat enclosures

I did mean the toy fluffy type....
Wellynton Boots loves to pull their tails off & his brother Shimba & pals all look at you as much as to say "thats another one spoilt" & if it happens to be purple then it stands no chance !

oh those ones are good.... and yes the cats love the little furry ones.~!

Well today I got the shadehouse all cleaned up... an area set up for litter trays and cleaned up some branches for the cats to climb on.
Just need dh to pull the shadecloth off and mesh it all, and rebuild the door. He wants to extend it further down the side of the house, so there will be more area for the cats. Well that's only after I said I wanted the cats to have the run of the side... he only wanted to put tunnels in...
I also need a trailer load of woodchips to put down on the ground and around the plants to protect them.
so fingers crossed it will be done in time for when gryfn comes home!

Looking forward to seeing pictures of it when you are finished!

Yeh I just need dh to mesh it all... that's whats going to take the longest... just getting him to get it done!
But then he might just surprise me... he has on occasion without me hassling him. Usually he leaves things like this to the last possible second and gets all uptight cause it's not done.

In the next two or three months Im building a large enclosure on the side of the house so would be very interested to see the end result of yours and to hear of anything that you learnt along the way.
The mesh is a concern of mine as I want to make sure its going to last for years without any worry of rust or them being able to bite through / dig under it.

I'm not sure what mesh dh is going to use. We have some aviary wire down the back yard so he might use that with some chicken wire.
We won't have any problem with them digging out as it's the space between the house and the fence which is probably just over a metre wide.

Originally Posted by Tomiam

In the next two or three months Im building a large enclosure on the side of the house so would be very interested to see the end result of yours and to hear of anything that you learnt along the way.
The mesh is a concern of mine as I want to make sure its going to last for years without any worry of rust or them being able to bite through / dig under it.

I thought I would share some pics of the cat run that i took today.
Still work to do... the roof and the shelves.....




and here are the cats playing on the branches I have int he old aviary for them to climb on....




And the doorway....

Originally Posted by Tomiam

In the next two or three months Im building a large enclosure.....

Ok.. well its now a while since I posted that comment but Im VERY happy to say that Im done It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, probably six or seven 10hr days to completely erect the frame work, treat the already treated wood, pin on the welded wire mesh and then.. eventually.. let the cats out for a play

I borrowed the works van for a day and headed off to B&Q to grab all the wood & fixings I would need. One thing I will say about B&Q is that when they say "they will cut any wood for you" what they actually mean is any wood that hasnt been treated.
Might not seem a big difference, but when you've just lugged 20x 3m long beams, 10x 3m posts and 4x huge 4.8m posts across the superstore only to be told .. "sorry sir, we cant cut pretreated wood as we would then be selling it as untreated". Kinda takes the... (rude word).

Anyways.. moan over
I went for hot dip galvanised welded wire mesh, sourced from ebay. Ended up using 30m of 6ft wide 1" x 1" mesh and 20m of 2ft wide 1" x 1" mesh. I figured this would be stronger than chicken wire / nylon mesh, and it definately appears to be so.
The enclosure has two gates on it. Both of them are spring loaded (top and bottom) to ensure the gate always closes, and in that respect it does it admirably :D

I let Storvenn and Loki out in it last night and it took them a little while to become confident. What was their 'whole world' (our house) suddenly looked very small to them I bet, but things were quickly forgotten once they discovered "FLIES!!!!"
Both appear to love chasing em down and 'clapping' them out of the air with both paws!

No furniture has been put in there yet, but we have plans to have a ledge under the kitchen window so they can come out of the house that way in the cooler months, rather than we keep the door open all day.

Originally Posted by Scrapdragon

Yeh I just need dh to mesh it all... that's whats going to take the longest... just getting him to get it done!
But then he might just surprise me... he has on occasion without me hassling him. Usually he leaves things like this to the last possible second and gets all uptight cause it's not done.

Sounds familiar ! ha ha, - good luck ! looking forward to seeing the finished article