More additions around the homestead

A tiny, barely-weaned kitten adopted us a couple of months ago. She was an itsy bitsy thing, feisty and adorable...but we swore we weren't going to encourage her to stay. Just a few weeks earlier, a longtime feline member of our household had died, and none of us felt ready.

But she was so hungry. And so cute. A little food couldn't hurt, right? Then the boys named her Miss Lollipop, and we all started calling her Lolli. One thing led to another, as so often is the case, and last Saturday my SIL could be found hard at work putting together this modern, slant-roof house for her. It's big enough to hold straw, a blanket, a bed and her food and water, because...even though we've already done all the requisite pet owner things, including spaying...my daughter and SIL still insist that she's going to be a backyard cat. And, trust me, she hasn't strayed from the yard since the first day she arrived. She didn't even leave when we went on vacation. (OK...I admit that we left food and water, but we still expected her to be gone when we got back. She wasn't.)

Be that as it may, we've always had indoor cats, so I'm prepared to go out on a limb and predict that she'll never sleep a night in her new kitty condo. The first cold night, either they or I will be out calling her to come inside, and that will be that.

Grandson #2 won't stay out of the house though. Maybe it won't be a total bust.

Lolli...the cat who wasn't supposed to stay

Lolli having a snack in her modern slant-roof kitty house...
or perhaps in the world's smallest playhouse for kids?

Follow-up anecdote about the cat: The day after the kitty house was built, I went to the grocery store, which is 3 miles away. I shopped for about an hour, and as I was loading the bags into the car and getting ready to leave, a young man said, "Excuse me, but is that your cat?" He pointed under my vehicle, and there was Lolli. Apparently she had found a hiding place in the undercarriage and had come along for the ride. She was very frightened, and it took me a while to coax her out, but we finally made it home without incident. I've heard of cats meeting their demise under the hood, and you'd think that could just as easily happen by falling under a moving car.  How she kept her footing with all the stops and starts and bumps and dips, I'll never know. As well as I can figure, she has about 8 lives left.