Cat Shelter Building Workshop, Toronto Street Cats, Toronto, ON

From 10am to 2:30pm, I was at a cat shelter building workshop organized by Toronto Street Cats.

Our mission: improve the lives of Toronto’s homeless cats by offering spay/neuter services, free for feral cats, and building overwintering shelters. We are also working to increase public awareness about Toronto’s homeless cat population and the importance of spay/neuter and trap/neuter/return (TNR). 

We are part of the Toronto Feral Cat Coalition, working together to implement strategic TNR programs to sterilize Toronto’s feral cats, decrease shelter intake and reduce euthanasia rates.

The workshops are held throughout the fall and winter season in the garage of the Toronto Humane Society  The shelters built are then made available to caretakers and colonies in need for $15.  Today there were about 48 volunteers and our goal was to build 100 shelters ... we built 120.

My friends, Darlene and Christine, were "leads".  They have been volunteering for about seven years.

Here were our supplies. 

Carole was our coordinator. 

First the insulation was cut for inside the bins.

Darlene showed us what to do

Here's Julia, my partner

Here were the bins which would soon be made into the cat shelters.

The cut insulation was secured inside the bins.

Entrance holes were drilled into the bins.

Thom cut piping to be used as the entrance.

Darlene showed us how to attached the entrance tubing ... lots of heavy duty gorilla tape!

My first (of many) finished shelter

The entrance is temporarily covered so mice can't get into them
while they are being stored

Straw was placed in the shelter and then a lid was placed on top.

In five hours, we built 120 cat shelters, of which 109 were sold. It was a fun day helping the homeless Toronto kitties and I look forward to attending another workshop soon!