What is Claw Patrol?

Introduction

I saw a rodent in the back yard enjoying the beautiful water feature we have. I reached out to the local animal control, which offered me free traps or to be part of a pilot program where they provide you feral cats. You feed and house the cats, and then in exchange they are essentially barnyard cats and they keep your property free from vermin — a trade cats have been making for thousands of years. The wonderful people at Feral Fixers said we would be good candidates and would be happy to provide some ferocious cats to help with our rodent issue. We were expecting feral cats — wild, free and not friendly.

Designing

The great folks at feral fixers pointed me towards some very reasonable feral cat houses. Making a small house out of a rubbermaid tote, or a cooler seem like practical solutions. I am not always a practical person and I wanted to build something more fun, larger, and hopefully better. I found some practical design choices. I live in Chicagoland, so a few things were important.

• a few inches off the ground to prevent snow accumulation from blocking the door
• L shape — meaning the door has a right angle to a sleeping area. This is to prevent the windy city from ripping through the structure
• insulation
• small entrance door to deter larger animals

I had read that cats prefer a front door and a back door to escape from — but I thought that just would make things that much more drafty in Chicagoland land I had to make weather related choices.

After much consideration and some designing sessions, I decided the only logical solution would be a three apartment complex. One door to the outside would lead into a hallway — where you could go left, right, or up to the penthouse. This way if cats were not feeling social, they could sleep in different areas without fighting. I did not know how friendly the cats would be with each other at this point — and I figured the more space they had to spread out, the better. If they decided to huddle together for warmth, each apartment would be large enough to accommodate all the cats we may get. With the penthouse being on top, this also provided a deck on the right side of the structure. This allows a suspended hammock for lounging on a lazy afternoon.

I did a rough sketch in Sketchup, and decided this would work for my plans and skillset with the circular saw. I do not have many skills with the circular saw.

Surveillance State

I knew I wanted to incorporate cameras into the build. I needed a way to look inside the apartments to check occupancy and check usage throughout the day / night cycle. I knew it would be traumatizing for the occupants if I were to rip off the roof while they were sleeping for a peek in. Due to the size of the complex, I knew I wanted a lot of cameras. At the current rate, the cheapest POE Ubiquiti cameras are G5 Turrets — $148 with a Trump Tariff surcharge, and the wireless cameras are G4 Instants at $119 before taxes. With six cameras, that would come out to over $900 for the POE and $750 for the wireless. I decided to explore other options, because as much as I love staying within the Ubiquiti ecosystem, that is not something I can justify for feral cats.

The Tapo 2k cameras made up their lack of POE, by being $32 each. Bringing the total cost of cameras to a much more reasonable (but still a little crazy) $200.

The tapo cameras come with a really nice flexible arm and base, which would allow a cat to swat at it and change where the camera is pointing. Obviously that would not work so I designed an camera holder and printed that out so it would angle down at the correct angle.

Lessons learned

The roofline is sagging a bit. I need to add an additional support to straighten that out and I’ve got to cut back the deck some where water pools after a rain storm. This will allow for a covered deck that won’t get wet and warp with the weather. I wonder if a deck sealer would help with that.

The cheap camera system is actually working a lot better than I imagined it could.

They don’t sleep in there every night, but they use it enough that I am happy that they are using it. I definitely get a smile on my face when I see the Ferocious Four taking a nap in their hammock.