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

I was at a cat shelter building workshop today organized by Toronto Street Cats.  The workshops are held every two weeks throughout the fall and winter season in the garage of the Toronto Humane Society ... today was the first one of the season (the last one was at the beginning of February).  I went to most of the workshops last year ... it's so nice helping the kitties in Toronto keep warm and dry during the cold winter.

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.

In eight years of building shelters, Toronto Street Cats has made over 6,000!  In the 2018/19 season, 700 shelters were made and 6,040 have been made since they started in the fall of 2010!

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

Big sheets of insulation were cut for inside the bins.

Thom cut the tubing which would be taped to the the entrance holes into the bins.

I cut one sheet of the insulation and was then moved to taping the insulation pieces inside the bins.

Before

After

Then Thom drilled big holes in the bins and the tubing would be taped to them.

Before

After

The bins were filled with straw and instructions and lids were put on top.

Ready to go!

The shelters are available to caretakers and colonies in need for $15 and refurbished ones are $5.  Today 47 volunteers built 138 shelters ... and all were sold by the end of the day!   Yay!  And loads of straw was given out for free!