Mouseproofing

 While I was in Kiruna Keldor found a very recently and very dead and mangled mouse or shrew (there wasn't enough left to tell) on the floor, the cats having finished with it. Early this week he saw the cats playing with something and investigated, to discover a very freshly dead shrew, which was only missing a bit of its belly, so the characteristic nose could still be seen. He's seriously rodent phobic, so I had to clean it up. Ick. I don't like picking up dead, bloody, bodies, even when (especially when?) they are so tiny.

Therefore we decided that it is time to do something to keep mice and shrews out of the catio. So he cut some scrap metal plate at work, and bent them to shape. Yesterday, which was a lovely autumn day, he indtalled them, a wall around the entire outer perimeter of the outdoor cat enclosure, sunk into the earth, and with a folded over edge to keep them from climbing over it and into the cage. Hopefully no future mice or shrews will make the fatal mistake of joining the cats in the catio.

While he installed that I fixed the paving stones, which had been set in there rather haphazardly last autumn when we built the enclosure, to keep their paws out of the mud. Now there is a much nicer floor. Then he installed the second cat door at the catio end of the tunnel, so hopefully we will not have snow blowing up the tunnel this winter, and we instslled olaces in the tower for the cats to rest and enjoy the view.

That took more than four hours, but I am happy with the result.