Introduction We first new that Shadow was coming to stay with us towards the end of August 2003 and so it was action stations to get a stud house sorted for him as soon as possible. We did a bit of internet searching and Yellow Pages where we looked at cattery units and stud houses until we decided that a custom built shed would more than suffice at a fraction of the cost. After looking up some shed companies. A quick visit to Sherwood Shed Co. in Nottingham resulted in an instant sale. The quality was excellent and they were quite happy to pre-build the internal partition required at little extra cost. The best bit was that they had a cancellation on delivery for later in the week and fitted us in instead. The only problem was they needed a concrete base to install it on which resulted in some back breaking work for us and working all through the night to get the foundations and base completed. Believe me... manually mixing a ton of concrete and working through the night is not recommended. The shed arrived a couple of days later and the lads from Sherwood Shed assembled it as part of the price. That was the easy bit... now the fun started! What I thought shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks has taken months and although close to completion, has a lot left to do. There a so many considerations for a stud house which we have summarised below: 1. Must be warm. Our stud house is fully insulated and has both electric heated beds and an electric radiator. These keep both stud and queen warm all year round, rain or shine. You can't have cold lovers. A new ring main was installed from the house using armoured cable to get power down to the stud house. This also provides plenty of lighting on timer switches and infrared sensors. 2. Must be safe and secure. The single lever shed lock is replaced with a quality five lever security lock. The window is being replaced with a double glazed panel. The external run has two compartments like an air lock which are pad locked. The external run has screening or Plexiglas half way up to act as a sneeze barrier between cats inside and outside. The external run is totally encased with 10mm square agricultural fencing wire. 3. Must have separate accommodation for the visiting queen. Both inside the house and outside in the run, the visiting queen has her own separate enclosures so she can avoid the advances of an over amorous male while she is getting to know him and afterwards of course. 4. Must have entertainment. Climbing frames are provided for when there is no queen in residence to stop him getting bored and crying. Regular visits from the humans is also essential and some of girls will go in with him when they aren't calling. We stopped short of providing him with TV showing the Discovery Channel or David Attenborough video's but he does have music on all day long to provide him something to listen to (Stereo obviously). 5. Must have storage. Some internal storage is essential to keep cleaning products and food. We haven't ruled out a small fridge for the summer although we suspect it may get filled with beer as well as cat food (not sure of the ratio). 6. Must be easy to maintain. We are plumbing in a cold water supply as well which is predominately for cleaning purposes but also for making coffee. A lot of time will be spent with Shadow so the stud house needs to have home comforts for the human visitors too. Photos
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