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I received a new Extreme Heat Alert yesterday. Once again, high 90s, possible triple digit weather headed our way. I don’t want to have the same scare, I had earlier with my outdoor kitties. So this morning I decided to build them cooling shelters, using cinderblocks and tree limbs, pine boughs that have been knocked down and still lying around along with other storm debris.

I used the cinderblocks to make a space for the cats to go into and lay down. I used the twigs the limbs and storm debris to create a sort of rough roof structure. Then started piling the fallen branches of the pines, evergreens etc., to create a shelter for them. I made sure to cover the areas where the cinderblocks were because they do maintain heat, but I do not believe after I finished that any sunlight can get through these branches that I’ve stacked up.

The photos above show the construction of the shelters. I hope this works, it was too close for comfort last time to have these cats and such distress and be unable to do anything for them since we also had power outages on that day.

This is the orange mackeral tabby who’s been hanging around for the last two weeks. He is a tomcat (of course). We never seem to get neutered strays around here. His markings are amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. From the front half of his head to the middle of his back, he is a brilliant, orange, striped mackeral  tabby. Almost as if someone has drawn a line down the middle of his back, the back half of him is also in the macro tabby pattern, but it’s a muted orange. I decided to call him Hamilton. He seems to want to stick around coming in at all hours of the day and night. I am looking at ads on Facebook because July 4 is a scary night for kitties and they runoff and go along way before they stop running. So far I have not seen anything to what he looks like being searched for. He is not feral and by next week, he will no longer be a tomcat. He’s welcome to stay and eat for as long as he wants to, but I’m not going to have an intact male running around during kitten season. He looks fairly young. Hopefully in a few days, I will be able to get him into a cat carrier and get him into the vet and get him neutered.

Soaring into the triple digit temperatures recently brought quite a scare. Three of my free roaming, ferals, I found open mouth panting in the yard, barely able to move. At the time it was 106°F. I quickly fetched carriers and remarkably was able to pick each kitty up. They were so hot. They were all my senior boys, but they offered no resistance. As I was carrying two of the carriers  into the house, I noticed another cat flat on the grass. This kitty turned out to be my Bentley! I quickly put the remaining feral into my bathroom. I grabbed one more cat carrier and returned to find Bentley just flat as a pancake. When I picked him up, he was so hot. His ears were burning. His tummy was hot. His paws were hot. He was open mouth, panting rapidly.

He quickly joined the others. I. turned the fan on low turned off the light and shut the door so they could at least cool down a bit. Thankfully, I have supportive fluids on hand. However, what I couldn’t find were the proper size syringes. I had to stick these poor kitties at least seven times each to get enough fluids into them to bring them back around. Not one kitty resisted. I also gave each kitty a tepid bath, and put rubbing alcohol on their ear flaps and the bottom of their paws. I do not remember it ever being this hot that so many cats were succumbing to the heat at the same time.

Thankfully , all kitties are now back to normal. I had taken some empty water bottles and filled them. I put them into my freezer for 24 hours and then laid them out around where I know the cats were sleeping and hanging out. I covered each one of the bottles with a thin  pillowcase. I’m sure it wasn’t very comfortable for them to lay on these plastic bottles just to get some coolness and relief.

Then I remembered that I had upstairs all of these snuggle pads. They are made of pure plastic. Yes, they are a heating element, but they’re completely sealed. I ended up substituting the water bottles for these flat round plastic discs. I know I won’t be able to ever use them again for a heating element, but for what I needed during that time for them, it’s worked out quite well. Just running the discs under the cold water and then putting them into the freezer they froze fairly quickly.The kitties were more prone to except them as a bed because they were flat and they didn’t make noise when they laid on them.

I have to admit that Bentley scared me the worst, he was so reactive to the heat. He’s 15 years old, he lives outside either in one of the cat enclosures coming and going at will.  I wondered if he had an underlying health issue because he was the last one to come around. I found out that his stomatitis was extremely active, plus for the first time since I’ve had him he had ear mites in his ears. Generally, he gets yeast infections in his ears, but this time he had ear mites. I dosed him with Revolutions because that also kills ear mites. He is doing fine now and we are back down into the 80s and the 90s. Hoping we don’t get more triple digit weather anytime soon.

While they were all in the bathroom and I had the fan going for them-Of course we had a power outage. It went out at 8 PM and it didn’t come back on until 9 AM the next day. I ended up just putting them outside in the carriers under the shady trees and thanking God that we had a little bit of wind to keep them cooler. For Bentley, I just sat outside on my deck with him in my lap all night. He just slept there didn’t move an inch. I didn’t close my eyes because I didn’t want the raccoons to come up and harass me or him. He was just plum exhausted.

I am still coughing, but I am not infectious anymore. However, I am staying away from people just in case. I was told there was just a little residual fluid left in one lung. An annoying visitor, who just won’t leave yet. There are a lot of people in town that are sick right now. The hospitals are full up once again with people fighting upper respiratory infections. So grateful that I was able to stay out of the hospital. I don’t know what would’ve happened to my cats otherwise.