Bored cats = trouble cats!  Even more than trouble (although cat shenanigans can be frighteningly destructive), boredom in cats can lead to a host of other problems including depression, health and litterbox issues.  If given free access to the outdoors, a well-fed housecat will normally roam and patrol a territory of around 5 acres on a regular basis, while their feral counterparts range much further.  And, simply put, even five acres  has a whole lot of stimulation - tantalizing scents, animal trails to follow, birds to wish for.  But that free-roaming lifestyle has plenty of other problems attached to it and just isn't possible, or even recommended, for the majority of housecats.

As I have said before, cats are REALLY intelligent.  I often think that living with cats is a bit like living with toddlers in the house.  They are easily smart enough to learn all kinds of tricks - sometimes they are the kind of tricks that I enjoy - like 'shake' or 'boop', and sometimes they're not so fabulous tricks like Haku's opening the cupboard doors where the treats are stored!  And just like any toddler, cats need to have their intellect challenged and their senses stimulated to maintain their physical and mental health.

So, what do you (as a loving cat owner) do?  Outdoor adventures on leash and harness aren't always practical or possible, even with a nature-loving cat mom like myself, let alone our many friends who live in large cities.  But, for the times when going outdoors really isn't a possibility, we have hit on a happy (if sometimes messy!) solution for ShiShi and Haku - indoor cat forts.  And not so surprisingly, those kitty forts have a great deal in common with the temporary forts that I used to build for my own kids when they were younger.

Whenever something keeps us indoors, as the weather often did this past summer (Florida summers are just crazy hot), that's when I pull out my indoor kitty fort building skills.  It doesn't honestly take a lot on my part - maybe 5-10 minutes of my time, plus the willingness to let my living room be a complete disaster for the next few hours.  ShiShi especially is ALWAYS willing to help with the building part.  Generally she is there inspecting every little layer that I add to the pile of human and cat stuff that turns into the fort-of-the-day.  Haku is a bit slower to the game, but always makes sure to stake a claim once the building process is done!   

Both cats always seem to know that the fort is especially for them, even if I haven't included any of their own toys in it, and they always ask me to play with them in their forts as well.  In fact, they pretty much expect it.  (Those pitiful eyes and flirty mews do me in every time!)  And once the fun and romping around has died down, I'm sure to find at least one of them napping in their temporary castle, guarding it from all intruders.

Do I think that these forts do their job?  The answer is a massive yes!  Any day that includes the building of one of a kitty fort - either simple or elaborate - is also generally a day with far less unhappy pawing at the door for adventures outside.   I also see some of the other adventuring benefits in the form of one (very)picky eater finishing all of her dinner, and more kitty cuddles from both of them.  And distinctively less pawing at that kitchen cupboard!  They also just seem to be more alert and likely to be inspecting the house for more fun, rather than simply sleeping through the day.  For anyone with cats who get into that extra bit of trouble on too frequent a basis, or even cats who have become lethargic and less interested in play, I can't recommend enough the magic or these easy-to-make, temporary forts.

​Happy Building!

1.  Temporary cat forts can (and should) be simple.  Just a few items presented in new way can be very interesting to a cat.  

2.  Claw hair clips and clothespins combined with a sheet or a few scarves and a chair will take you far!  Other items that my cats seem to frankly adore included in a fort are boxes (of course!), baskets, hula hoops, a few of their catnip toys scattered in the structure, and tissue paper.

3.  Some of the all-time favorite forts that I've made for ShiShi and Haku have included one of their cat trees - either moved to the center of the room, or even laid on its side.  Apparently nothing is ever so amazing as one of their own items, made to seem entirely different.

4.  Don't feel obliged to leave the awesome new fort cluttering your space for more than a few hours.  Just like the aforementioned toddlers, cats can also have short attention spans.  In fact, it seems to keep them much more stimulated if one fort disappears, but something quite different appears the next day.  And really, have fun with this - time to let your own inner child out to play!

I've been meaning to write a post for a while about the raw cat food diet that has been so successful for ShiShi and Haku.  It's become an integral part of our family lifestyle, thanks to both the improved health of both cats (and the drastically reduced odor in the litter box).  At this point, we have a hard time imagining feeding our cats any other way - it really does make that much difference.  The improved kitty health in our household is nothing to sneeze at - both of my cats had issues that were either dramatically reduced or disappeared altogether, seemingly thanks to the raw food diet that they eat now.

Before I go any further into this raw diet stuff, though, I would like to say that there are probably a million opinions spread around the internet about whether a raw food diet is healthy for cats.  I'm not here to recommend my cats' raw diet to anyone else for their own cat.  I've just had so many questions over time about how I feed ShiShi and Haku that I wanted to share our experience.  Feeding raw food to cats is a very individual decision, and should be based on both the cat's specific needs  and the availability of appropriate raw foods.   For anyone considering switching their own cat's diet to raw, I recommend asking your vet's opinion.

When Haku first arrived at our home around 4 months old, he was a very sick kitten.  In fact, we spent the better part of two months wondering if he was going to survive.  I spent countless hours laying on the floor to be near him, while he huddled under one piece of furniture or another, completely miserable.  He had stuff coming out of his eyes, his nose, and his bum (diarrhea), and antibiotics got us nowhere.  After (many!) emergency visits our vet pronounced that Haku had permanent allergies that he'd just have to live with, and that all six foods we had tried with him so far were a problem.

Totally stressed at that point, I went home that night and (feeling completely desperate) cooked up a batch of ground turkey from our freezer, mixed it with cat vitamins (left over from our previous cat's end-of-life diet), eggs and some salmon oil.  Haku gobbled it up (no surprise there, if you know Haku lol!) and miraculously had normal kitten poop  the next day.  Over the following month I kept feeding him the cooked food mix and his eyes, and nose mostly cleared up, as well as his disturbing lack of energy.  

Fast forward to a few months later when we brought ShiShi home to live with us.   I was still cooking all of our cat food, and supplementing appropriately (having educated myself a bit more on cat nutrition by then.  But ShiShi was a really picky eater.  So picky, in fact, that we constantly worried if she was getting enough calories, no matter what we tried to feed her (yup - we ended up trying a bunch of different commercial brands with her too, but had the same picky results).  With lots of coaxing, we (mostly) kept her fed, but when she was a little over a year old, she stopped eating altogether for nearly a week.  That week was one of the longest, most helpless of my life - one I never want to experience again.  Once we miraculously had her eating again, I was determined to make some kind of a change that could resolve whatever was keeping her from eating properly.

ShiShi's tummy had always seemed a bit bloated and tender no matter which food we were feeding her, and I'd read that raw meat was supposed to be easier for cats to digest.  I'd seen a variety of raw frozen cat foods at my local pet store, and decided to take the plunge.   From the first, it was easy to see that ShiShi preferred nearly every sample of raw food that she tried to any of the other foods we had given her to date (more brands and types than I can even remember by then).  We did stumble around finding a raw brand and meat variety that she would eat consistently, but once we found Rad Cat Raw Venison, we were golden!  For the next blissful year, we watched ShiShi fill out, her coat sparkle, and her personality become dramatically more outgoing with us. 

And what was Haku doing all this time?  Eating away like the food machine that he is under nearly all circumstances.  Mind you, he still had that incredibly sensitive digestive system - any move toward commercial food always leads to diarrhea misery, but raw or home cooked foods seem to be just fine for him.  In fact, Haku's eternal struggle with extra weight melted away (while actually eating much more food).  It used to seem like he could look at an extra calorie sideways and gain an weight, but that has completely evened out now - even if he manages to snag an extra 'treat' off the counter (all the time!), his weight stays nicely in balance.  Both kitties are glowing  since the raw food switch last year, and scooping out the litter box is practically pleasant - no odor, and just small, compact poop.  A win in every direction.

Then, several months ago, disaster struck.  Probably not the kind of disaster you are thinking, though...  The frozen raw cat food company that ShiShi's ever-picky taste buds preferred ran into financial issues and stopped production.  Needless to say, I nearly cried.  After eking out the last bits of Rad Cat left in our freezer, we faced a non-eating ShiShi.  Once again, she was refusing most of what we put in front of her unless it was sprinkled heavily with bonito flakes and catnip chicken bits.  And sometimes even that failed.   

The morning that ShiShi finally balked completely at eating her breakfast, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and just make something for her that she would eat - and could thrive on at the same time.  I ran down to my local health food store and grabbed a pack of frozen ground venison.  And blessings - she chowed it down like candy the second that I had it defrosted.  Whew!  As long as she was eating, I knew that I could figure out the rest with lots of research.

Fortunately, the cat food supplement that I'd used before with Haku's original cooked turkey was also formulated to be used with a raw diet.  Alnutrin, the company who makes the supplement, provides an online nutritient calculator where I am able to plug in the ingredients that I want to use in a cat meal, and make sure that it will be properly nutritionally balanced with the vitamin supplement.  ​While the Alnutrin calculator doesn't list venison specifically, I feel pretty comfortable using their calculations for ground beef.  The end result is that ShiShi eats, and I'm sure that she's getting the nutrition that she needs to stay her healthy best.  I use my same recipe for ground elk and ground buffalo, which she also enjoys.  Unfortunately, she is still completely unwilling to eat chicken or turkey, or even rabbit, but I figure that frankenprey is definitely better than no prey at all.