@herself thank you. Yep, a heated shelter and feeder for my colony of five feral cats (a mamacat and her grown kittens). See the cats category on the blog for the weekly cat posts of their antics, and this post for a summary of building the shelter.
@dejus at first I thought "that's a rather large cat!" but now I see you've got yourself a cathouse! Question: have you got that water container rigged up to a hose?
@rickcogley designed and built myself one, yes (see earlier in this thread for a link to the construction, if you didn’t see it already). There is a hose near the water dish, but that doesn’t help, as the water is turned off for the winter, to avoid burst pipes when it freezes. So I just take out a plastic bottle of water every so often to refill it. The thing you see going into the dish is a power cable, to heat the water a little to prevent it freezing. Check the blog post for more info.
@dejus ah, of course. I commented from the macOS app and did not see the conversation. That's super DIY and very good! I'm in Yokohama near Tokyo and it's pretty temperate here, but I noticed the water in the dog's bucket was frozen this AM. Thanks for the link!
@rickcogley Thanks. I enjoyed making it, though I might design it a bit differently in hindsight. Heated dishes are nice; I have one for my dog too, plus heaters that go under the waterers for my chickens. I want to visit Japan one day; I’m a big fan of Japanese gardens.
@dejus there are so many to look at, too! You might enjoy tooling around Kamakura. It's a wonderful place.