Persiflage (my lovely hubby) and I have eleven pooties, indoor kids who live better than many "hoomin" children. As I write this they are warming their cat buns by the fire after just having consumed their snack.
Our pooties have had issues in the past which we have helped them resolve, to the great joy of us all. I diaried about it once and received wonderful advice, a lot of which we followed with good results for them and us.
We do care for one feral Pootie, Copcar, so named because he is black and white. In the five years we have fed and nurtured him we have never been allowed to touch him but we can now get within a few inches of his highness at feeding time.
I'll explain our dilemma below the fold. "Meow".
We purchased a "kitty heating pad" for Copcar after quite a bit of research on Persiflage's part. This pad seems to be the one that works best for the ferals, is waterproof and provides good and consistent heat acceptable to felines. Our knowledge of the aforementioned is from feedback provided by others who use this product and are satisfied the cats use it and seem happy and non-threatened.
In trying to introduce Copcar to the pad we placed it where he normally lies during the day. That has gone great and he seems to love it. The problem is that it's out in the open. We tried to move it into the nest we made for him and put his food bowl right next to it and no go, he keeps following us back to the original placement site.
We caved on that for tonight, it's COLD out. His food is right next to it and he seems content. However, we would like to lure him into the carport for shelter as well as warmth but we failed at that today.
Can anyone offer up ideas to transition the heating pad and Copcar from the back yard to the carport? We did the whole "food bowl by the pad in the new location" thing but he just didn't go for it. Now that those are back where they were he is laying on the pad and dining from his bowl placed next to the heating pad.
This is fine unless it rains, snows, sleets or the wind is high. So, I'm asking for thoughts and ideas as to how we make the transition in a non-threatening way.
Forgot to mention we made a nest for him last winter and he went right to it. Since then we have done a lot of pruning of the foliage surrounding our carport although it is still very protective.
Help, we just cannot figure this out!
Thanks for any help y'all can give us and Copcar!