A catio is a cat patio. It offers an outdoor space for kitties that are mostly kept indoors.
Frankly, it breaks my heart that our three cats can’t run “in the wild”, doing things that are quite natural for them to do: chase butterflies and birds, crawl through undergrowth, roll in the grass, smell flowers. But our house backs up on a forest. There simply are too many predators. We have foxes, raccoon dogs, Japanese badgers, huge hawks which can pick up a full-size cat and fly away, snakes, occasional wild boars.
And then there’s the monkeys!
Yes, we have several large families of Japanese macaques living all around us. Sometimes they just look for food, sometimes they are aggressive, as when one jumped on the hood of my step-daughter’s car and ripped off her windshield wiper.
The catio will let them enjoy the outdoors without fear of being attacked or otherwise terrorized.
I can’t say that building it was a simple, straightforward process. Without blueprints or any model to work off of, the only option was to make it up as I went along. So I did. Aside from creating an enclosure which kept the kitties in and predators out, I had to make it typhoon proof. Even though we’re pretty far inland, two or three times a year we get serious typhoons with steady winds of up to 80 kmh (50 mph), gusts even higher. My catio is secured to a cement foundation. So in a worst case scenario, it might collapse but it certainly will not blow away.
Anyway, here are a few photos of putting the catio together, and finally the kitties enjoying it.
Next we’ll do some interior decorating: plants, ground covering, ladder, shelves, maybe a hammock. Fountain? That would be nice!
New World Odor
President Donald Trump has just released fragrances for God-fearing, America-loving patriots. While proudly wearing Trump’s trademark red MAGA caps, they can now make an olfactory declaration of their love of the U S of A!
The fragrances named “Trump Victory 45-47” — referring to his capturing the 45th and 47th presidencies — are available as cologne for men and perfume for women, and are bargain priced at only $249 for the limited edition 3.3 fl oz numbered collectors version. You can get them at the dedicated website. Hurry! They won’t last.
I recognize that there are some nasty people out there, cynics who would want to portray Trump as being a crude, obnoxious opportunist, using his prominence as the world-renowned leader of the most powerful and wealthiest country in human history, to suck money out of the wallets of Trump loyalists and other gullible chumps. This would obviously be a grotesque and insulting abuse of power.
But hey, let’s cut the man some slack.
What’s his motto? It’s not MTRGA: ‘Make Trump Resorts Great Again’. It’s MAGA! ‘Make America Great Again!’ That says it all! That tells us where his loyalties really lie.
Trump is not getting any younger. He probably hasn’t — especially considering his diet — got that many years left on this Earth. Yet he’s dedicating this final chapter in his life to service to our nation. His devotion to the United States of America limitless and beyond dispute.
Look at the reality. He’s been a super-entrepreneur all his life, wheeling, dealing, perfecting the art of the deal. He could right now be in the private sector bankrupting companies. Instead, he is selflessly committed his life to the public sector, bankrupting the country.
No, you naysaying nitpickers, ‘Trump Fragrances’ is not some scam. Trump Fragrances is our deeply patriotic, courageous, noble president’s bold and history-changing attack on the stench that now belches from our bilious economy, the noxious fumes hovering over our whole putrid and stagnating society, the effluvium exuded by the political milieu of Washington DC.
And what a stinky mess our governing institutions, including the Executive Branch, have become! The swamp creatures roaming the halls of power are exclusively beholden to the ruling elite — the extreme ultra wealthy — pathologically beguiled by American exceptionalism, addicted to war, paranoid, xenophobic, ill-informed, insular, myopic, misinformed, delusional, deaf, dumb, and blind. And that’s on a good day!
But there is hope!
Trump Fragrances will displace the putrefying off-gassing of our dying democracy, the foul stench of corruption and treachery, the malodor of malfeasance and incompetence, the rank miasma of hypocrisy and betrayal, and doggedly overpower the fetid reek of failure with the SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS . . . of winning and winning and winning again and again.
Yes, good people, with Trump Fragrances, we are witnessing a revolution in the making!
Call it the . . . New World Odor.