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Happy Valentine's Day you all! Hope you spend valuable time next to your loved one either it's a good friend, the other half of your soul or even a pet. Today's post is going to be my Valentine post for those who quickly became my best friends in the last couple of months.

So... after my previous experience sharing something that I've done on my own, I thought that I should repeat this activity again, but on a completely different level.

It's not like I didn't take part in DIY activities before but I simply never thought about capturing those moments and share them further since my blog never focused on this field and I doubt it ever will since I don't do it on a daily basis or have a business towards that direction.

However, the post from today comes also as a guide that perhaps would inspire more people out there who love and take care of animals even if it doesn't necessarily mean to have them as pets or inside their houses. Personally, I am a bit of both, already having a cat I adopted with my boyfriend but since we took him, we never stopped also taking care of Sky's family, including siblings and their mother.

If you don't know, Sky is a black cat. And he had two more black siblings, one white and one gray. While the white and gray one quickly found a new home people keeping distance from the black ones due to all the sayings such as they bring bad luck and who knows what other lies, the two black siblings had to adapt to the life of the streets and the constant danger not having a home they could return to.

I won't get into too many details saying how many fights I had with my boyfriend trying to convince him that we should adopt the other two siblings of Sky, who were also black since their mother was already an adult and she was used with the wilderness of both the streets and people living nearby. But long story short, we resumed just taking care of them without bringing them in the house since we live in a studio room with very little space available which is rented anyway, and that makes us live daily under the pressure of not having the owner find out we have a cat inside since it's forbidden.

DIY Outdoor Shelter for Cats (Intro)

I had this shelter in plan since the summer thinking about how brutal winters are in Romania lately and especially on the part of the country where I'm living, reaching even -25°C at night. Yet a temperature that it's impossible to be endured by any living out there.

With this thought, I started searching on the internet for already made up shelters to purchase for the cats but they were either too expensive or badly crafted with customers complaining about the bad quality overall.

So I began projecting everything in Photoshop as I envisioned, sending out the plan to my dad who had previous experience crafting 3 more shelters for animals.

He took note of my idea and handled the whole part of bringing the materials, as well as the tools we were going to use in order to obtain some results as close as possible to my concept. This involved pillars of resistance that made the skeleton, lots of wooden boards, polystyrene to thermally insulate the walls of the shelter, and a metal sheet to serve as the roof.

Cutting down the pillars

We began by cutting down the pillars which turned out as a more difficult task than planned because my father insisted on having them in two different sizes so we would be able to have the roof inclined to avoid forming deposits of water or snow on top of the shelter that will damage it quickly.

Setting up the shelter's skeleton

We decided to craft the sides of the skeleton so it's easier to place the other parts afterwards, also being able to save a bit of the bottom representing the feet of the shelter. Initially, we thought that placing some bricks under the shelter would be enough but this also made it easier to calculate the inclined surface we will generate for the roof later on.

Attaching wooden plates and insulating with polystyrene

The next step was measuring and cutting the wooden plates so they fit perfectly and isolate the walls of the shelter as best as possible. Additionally, I insisted on filling the space between these and the skeleton with polystyrene so there won't be any risk of having cold temperatures penetrate the walls and making it a cold shelter for the cats.

I've put so much accent on this step because of the reason mentioned at the beginning of the post but also because we are living at the foothills of the mountains and there is always wind here so temperatures feel a lot colder than the rest of the city. Aditionally, the wooden planks used for the shelter house were part of a 90s' closet from my grandma, so these were pretty thin and a few more layers were vital for more warmth.

After I filled the gaps with polystyrene, we added another layer of wooden planks so this one is held like in a sandwich and blocks the wind from getting inside.

Rising up the house

We repeated the same steps of making the skeleton, adding two layers of wooden planks and one layer of polystyrene in between with the rest of the sides of the house too. We encountered a bit of a trouble making everything sit together due to running out of long nails that will reach deep enough to hold it still. The biggest problem though, was that this action was taken around the Christmas holidays when many shops were either closed or had their schedule reduced, so we ended up adding one more wooden plank at the top for extra safety that everything will be held together.

Adding the roof

Last but not least, we made it to an end by adding the roof where we gave up on adding the polystyrene since we would have an extra layer anyway, including both wooden planks and the metal sheet which will protect the wood from getting quickly ruined by the rough weather conditions.

A thing that I wanted to do but which I thought that it's better to wait until spring kicks in, was to paint the house gray and to varnish it so I'm 100% confident the wood won't swell and rot. But being winter and having negative temperatures most of the time, it would take way too long to have everything dried and ready to be used by the cats. But hopefully we'll have spring temperatures soon and get this done too.

Arranging the interior

After 7 hours of work we finally could have the shelter house placed under our window which is where we feed our cats and take care of them. Unfortunately, we ended this project quite late that day so we had to postpone with one more day until finding the right resources to arrange the interior for even more warmth. Though, we received a first donation from a neighbor who brought us a blanket and a few days later some food for the cats.

One day later we had lots of hay straws placed inside which I heard that works the best to keep animals warm during the winter since these dry very quickly and maintain the temperature of cats' bodies better than any blanket or clothing material.

We also made a little upgrade to the entrance adding another wooden board at the bottom after we realized that this one was too large for cats and surprised a fox trying to get inside during the night.

Was it a good idea to have the shelter built? Absolutely.
Do cats love it? Yes!
Is it safe? Not every time...

As I said, we are living at the foothills of the mountains and all the surroundings are covered with plenty of sheepfolds that attract wild animals sometimes (foxes, bears...) but also redirect these towards our place, as well as make the dogs from the sheepfolds visit us from time to time, getting curious about the shelter house or eating cats' food.

Click on the images to see them in full resolution

Happily, the cats are smart enough to keep safe and only use the shelter when there is no danger nearby. That makes them don't always sleep inside but only stay in and around it mostly when it's daylight since the dogs are coming just at night from time to time.

Sadly, both siblings of Sky faced some fights from where they remained blind of the left eye but I'm happy they were strong enough to make it further and run and play as they did when they were kittens, like nothing was happening.

Check out more posts with Sky:

^{Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (260+ articles written on this field), but also abording other topics as well, like game reviews, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 550+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, editing, cooking, and doing various sports activities.}

~ @GabrielaTravels ~