Bonker's Kitty House: Our Outdoor Cat Enclosure

I originally drafted this post in November. 

We have a wild porch kitty. We’ve been calling her a porch cat because we don’t have a barn. She burrows under the shed and hangs around and under the house. We’ve had others drop by, but she was bold enough to make herself known, to let us cuddle and pet her, to let us pick the ticks off her and give her some Revolution. She goes on long walks with my father-in-law like a dog would and leaves us macabre offerings. She has been featured in some hammock videos I’ve made. 

Her name is Bonker(s). She likes to bonk things. Very affection. Much cuddly. We started calling her Bonker - a silly nickname in case we couldn’t keep her - and this evolved into Bonkers. She is orange-flavored and a little feral, so she goes on wild tears across the whole 18 acres and leaps off the 6-foot porch onto the bird feeder.

She was our garden guardian all summer, but once it got colder, we knew she’d need more. 

For starters, we’ve built her a shelter out of a 50-gallon storage container. We put it together:  

• Lined it with several layers of cardboard

• Cut flap doors lined with duct tape

• Sliced slits in the bottom for drainage

• Tucked a tarp over it

• Added a self-heating mat in the bottom - a layer of mylar surrounded by insulating layers of polyester (which works surprisingly well) 

I know I’ll have to keep an eye on the mat for moisture reasons, but shelters are supposed to be filled with straw or paper shreddings - something they can burrow in that dries out easily. We decided on corn straw, which doesn’t work for cats who have strong allergic reactions, but so far, so good here. 

My father-in-law grew multi-colored jewel popcorn this year, and they’re gorgeous - they came out in shades of russet and sienna and even purple with black straw. He gave a bunch to the grandkids, but we still have a basket. And we had a plot of corn straw still standing in the back field. 

It was when I was out cutting this up into pieces in a TJ Maxx bag that I heard it. A sound I look forward to all year: a trilling, multi-tonal set of coos from the sky. The cranes were here.