It worked. Jersey spends time there -- sometimes he's there at 3 a.m. when Harry wakes me to let him out. Sometimes he spends a few hours late in the evening, staring in at me working on the computer. He's not there every week, and it's not his primary shelter -- I haven't seen him there in really bad weather. Two or three weeks have passed when he'll sit at the window but not at the part with the blanket nor under the cover, even though it is raining. But every time I start to think the blanket must have been sprayed by a competitor, or the raccoons attacked him in that spot, I'll find him there again within a day or two. Cats like to move around.
Natasha has set up shop at the cat door -- inside, of course, because she is a cat who knows what she wants, and keeps it. She sits nose to nose with Jersey, except for the pane of glass between them. She sleeps in that post half the day and evening. I think it is to guard the door -- she has say over who comes through, and Jersey (although when they meet outside they touch noses) is not to come through. Harry, for instance, doesn't use the door when she's there.Boris, her original housemate, just walks over her.
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I'm so glad to hear that Jersey is sometimes warm and dry. I worry about him. Is there a way he could have a spot under the porch in the excellent under-porch storage area. A nice warm, dry, sheltered spot?
Or maybe you'd just find that the raccoons were nesting there, which would not be so nice.
Before I moved in, they had tried a couple of times to set up a dog-house like box for Jersey in the winter. But he will not approach anything that boxed in. In previous years, we have known that he was living in a garage with an open door down the block, but it's closed up this winter.
The old porch, before we redid it last summer, had lots of holes a cat could scoot into, and we've talked about whether we should leave the door to the new porch storage open for him -- but that would defeat the purpose of a locked cellar for the bikes, and encourage the raccoon, too.
There are spots around -- under the lean-to/bathroom on the north side of the house there is quite a cozy corner, sheltered from above by the floor of the lean-to, and from the east wind by a wood pile, and it's alongside the house so there's some residual heat. And the church has some deep window wells into the basement that are sheltered, if concrete-cold.
He snuck inside my room one night (or I only know about one night) in December, and the other cats didn't appear to mind (or to notice). I saw him sleeping in the place that Natasha has taken over. Ahem. Hence, I believe, Natasha's new nest. There's not much I can do about that -- the cats will have to work it out between them.
And frankly, I'm not sure I want to have a stray cat in my room -- fleas and parasites and who knows, in my one room. Not to mention cat fights in the middle of the night. If he'd let us catch him, and get him to a vet's for shots and a checkup, then he'd be welcome inside. I'm working on that -- so far, he's let me touch him once. It's a start.
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