It's been raining here in Los Angeles. It's raining in the above photo though you may not be able to see it. But what you can see is Lydia, impatiently waiting the storm out in her little house in my backyard. The house has been in that yard longer than she has.
I bought it because I had other feral cats living on and around my property and I worried for them when it was storming out there. 80% of the time, I had no idea where they went when it was raining. The other 20%, I saw them huddling under some bush or overhang that did a poor job of keeping them dry.
So I got this little house and put it out there. Some of them would go into it once in a while, some wouldn't. No one took up residence. When Lydia showed up in my yard and life around 2007, it would have been easier to get her into my microwave oven than into the little house. I put food in there. I put her in there. Neither worked. She avoided the place like it was on fire.
I tried moving it to different places in the yard. Didn't make a difference. It was leaking a bit so I had my handyman do some serious caulking and while he was at it, I had him take the door off it. I always left it open but it could have been closed and latched and I thought maybe that was scaring Lydia away from it. None of this made a difference.
So I gave up and was surprised — "shocked" would be a better word — a few weeks ago when she moved into it. I'm assuming this had something to do with her getting older. According to this article, "…the numbers [for outdoor cats] are generally not good, and cat lifespan ranges…widely, anywhere from three to 10 years. The average cat lifespan outdoors is 5.625 years."
Lydia was at least six months old when I first noticed her here and it's been a little more than twelve years since then. So she's getting up there, feline-wise.
I like seeing her in the house. Yesterday when there was a break in the rain, I went down and put some food out for her on my back porch…Friskies Turkey Dinner in honor of Thanksgiving. She sprinted out of the little house, dined and was back in there before the rain resumed. This makes me quite happy and I expect her to live in there for most of the rest of her life.
When she goes — which will not be soon — I'll probably rent the place out. In this neighborhood, houses that size are selling for upwards of $400,000 so I oughta be able to get $3000 a month for it. And that's without utilities.