Our Off Grid Arizona High Desert Homestead Needs A Cat House

In today’s episode we are going to talk about why our off grid Arizona high desert homestead needs a cat house!

We are Douglas and Keri and we recently quit our jobs, sold everything, and in September of 2022, after a lot of prayer and research, we took a leap of faith and moved onto our off grid homestead property in the high desert of Cochise County, Arizona. Follow along with us as we build our off grid homestead property from scratch with our two rebels, Willow & Zoey and our 16 y/o kitty, Boo, and our newest additions Luna and Ursa!

Yep, because getting puppies wasn’t enough, LOL!! Actually, we had committed to buying the puppies before cats were even a consideration. We had been planning on adopting some farm cats to help with rodent control down the road. If you watched Episode 77, https://youtu.be/fIpaH4ejXjw, you’ll see we had some very extensive rodent damage in the engine of our only car! It ended up being just under $4000 in repairs….luckily our insurance covered it under comprehensive, so we just had to pay our $1000 deductible.

We realized we need to be a lot more vigilant with these rodents, so we are getting cats ASAP. We have been watching the engine for rodent damage, but couldn’t see the damage that was going on from underneath 😬 We found out about a nonprofit in Green Valley AZ called Paws Patrol and they rehome outdoor feral or unsocial cats. Paws Patrol calls them “working cats” because they stay outside where they can help out around properties like ours. We do have to agree to provide the cats with shelter, food, water, and vet care as possible and the shelter vaccinates and spay/neuters them. They like to adopt these cats out in sets of 2, but we are hoping for 4, so we decided to build the cat house shelter big enough for 4 adult cats just in case we get that many!

I built this house based on a cat house that my dad had built when I was a kid. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of my dad in his wood shop building stuff and just the smell of sawdust reminds me of him :) Growing up, we had indoor\outdoor cats and this house kept them safe from the predators we had like coyote, possums, and raccoons. It has a “secret” type of entrance, where when the cats enters, there is immediately a “false wall” that they have to climb over to get to the main area of the house. We are also elevating the house up to keep it from having monsoon water soaking it and also in the hopes it will help keep snakes and large spiders out. We used a scap piece of roofing from our dog house build and will use that to collect rainwater too.

We have completed the adoption application for the cats, so now we wait....please hurry Paws Patrol!!! Hopefully we will be getting them soon, but in the meantime, we have set up a bunch of catch/release traps near the car. We are also keeping the hood up at all times because apparently that discourages the scoundrels from nesting. We are hoping the cats, the traps, and the hood up combination will save us from another expensive repair bill!

Hope you enjoyed today’s episode and we always appreciate a like and subscribe if you’re finding value in what we are sharing :) We love your comments, so please comment below and share this with anyone who you think might be interested!

DISCLAIMER: Douglas and Keri are not professional contractors and the information contained in this video is for entertainment purposes only. Please make sure to do your own research!

Once again, thank you all so much for your support of our channel! We hope to inspire you to follow your dreams and live your best life!

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