Lessons from Spending Hurricane Irma with Cats

I spent the time leading up to hurricane Irma telling everyone reassuring things. “We’re far inland.” “We’ll be fine.” “Don’t worry about us. Worry about the people on the coast.”

Most of this was because I thought I was really prepared, but I learned a lot from going through this hurricane with cats.

The truth is we are very lucky. Our house is mostly undamaged, neither of our trees fell down, and the huge pile of shingles we found in the yard after the storm belonged to our neighbor’s roof instead of our own. Thousands here in my community are without power as I write this, a week after the hurricane struck, including dozens of my nearby neighbors. So I feel really fortunate.

I did learn some lessons from this storm and its aftermath.

Lesson 1: High-strung cats pick up your stress

Ashton, who usually installs herself on her throne on the back of the sofa when it isn’t bedtime, hovered near me through the whole storm. While I had to ask Newton and Cupcake to come in from the sunroom during the storm, she turned into an uncharacteristically clingy cat until the storm passed, then went right back to her usual routine once my stress level subsided.

one-eyed brown tabby cat Staying calm for your cats really does make a difference.

Lesson 2: Have a plan to keep cool

Our neighborhood sand hill cranes routinely peck large holes in our window screens, many of them large enough to allow a cat to escape. This meant that when the power was out, we were only able to open our sunroom windows a couple inches.

four cats cluster around open door

Since hurricanes happen during the hot season of the year, this can make it pretty miserable in the house. I was especially worried about Newton, who isn’t heat-tolerant, but he spent extra time on the tile floors to keep him cool. I was ready to sacrifice some of our ice to bag it up and wrap it in a towel for him so he had something cool to sit with. Thankfully, our power came on before the full summer heat returned.

Lesson 3: Have a cat food back-up plan

With three of four cats eating raw food, I made sure to put several days’ worth of food in a storage bag and bury it in the ice of our cooler. I figured our freezer would hold its temperature for two days, and I could get a few more days out after that, if necessary. That would mean I wouldn’t have to rush to get out of my neighborhood for food if some roads weren’t passable.

Fallen tree after hurricane Irma

Our small, backup freezer crept up to 32 degrees by 24 hours without power, and by 36 hours, the freezer attached to the refrigerator had, too. By this time, my sister’s power had returned, and I was able to transfer my frozen cat food – and some human food, too – to her freezer to save it. Cupcake’s stomach doesn’t like change. I was afraid that falling back on the stored canned or freeze-dried raw food would mean stepping in vomit in the darkened house.

If we have to go through this again, I may go ahead and switch Ashton and Newton to canned or freeze-dried raw food immediately to preserve the supply of food for Cupcake and her sensitive stomach.

Lesson 4: Know your veterinary emergency options

When there’s a big storm, everyone closes. With a storm like Irma that knocked out power to 80% of our area, many businesses, including veterinarians, were unable to reopen for days after the storm had passed.

Closed sign, credit flickr creative commons/cogdog

Leave it to Cupcake to make me think we were going to need to go the vet ER after everything shut down for the storm. She turned out to be fine, and I will tell the whole story on Wednesday. But we had a few minutes of wondering whether we could get her to a vet. The emergency clinic 4 miles away was shut down for the duration, and the closest open emergency vet was over 20 miles away.

When there’s a storm, make sure you know what your options are before Murphy’s Law strikes.

Lesson 5: Stick to routines as much as you can

A storm and its aftermath can cause a lot of disruption. Cats love their routines, and even when the weather is fine, they don’t like their routines upset.

Cupcake let us know she was upset about not being able to go out and visit her friends at the coffeeshop by sitting in the loaf position on the kitchen counter, a place she knows she isn’t supposed to be.

black and white tuxedo kitten on counter

We did our best to keep kitty mealtimes at their usual times, even though it meant feeding them by flashlight. Keeping things as normal for them as possible during an abnormal time helped keep the cat stress level down, and that helped keep the human stress level down, too.

Things are returning to normal here, but we’re glad we had things we learned from it.

DIY Cat Paw Print Keepsakes

Have you seen the cute clay paw print keepsakes people make for their cats? You can make one with things you probably have already in your house!

DIY Paw Print Keepsake

The day I set out to make mine, I wasn’t planning to, so I had to so a little improvisation. So it’s likely you can adapt this to try today.

First, make salt dough. Yes, this is the stuff you may have used when you were a child to do crafts. It is nontoxic and made of three simple, cat-safe ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
½ cup water

salt dough ingredients

Mix all three ingredients together in a bowl and knead the dough with your hands. It takes a few minutes for the ingredients to combine as you knead and stop being sticky. If the dough feels crumbly and won’t hold together after a few minutes, add a teaspoon of water at a time and knead it in. If the dough stays sticky, add a tablespoon of flour at a time and knead it in until you have a nice dough in your bowl. Be patient when adding extra water or flour and make sure it is thoroughly kneaded in before adding more so you don’t overdo it.

salt dough in bowl

The next step would probably be easier if you have a rolling pin, but I don’t. So I put the dough down on some waxed paper and started patting it carefully flatter and flatter, trying to get to about 1/4 inch thickness. Mine never quite made it that thin.

I then put the waxed paper with the dough somewhere Ashton was familiar with. The whole point of this project was getting her paw print without having to grab her leg, so I chose to put the dough on my desk, a location she visits often.

You can see Ashton already peeking in through the open window to figure out what’s going on.

dough on desk

Next, I lured Ashton into walking across the dough. She is notoriously afraid of everything unfamiliar, so I was worried she would leave when she saw the unfamiliar object. Instead, she tasted it! I offered her some cheese to get her to walk across and leave paw prints.

(If you can’t see the video above, you can visit it directly to view.)

Ashton still thought the dough tasted interesting, probably due to the salt. Don’t let your cat eat the dough. The high salt content isn’t healthy.

one-eyed brown tabby cat licks clay

If you like the shape of the dough as a whole, you can keep it as is. I decided I wanted to cut out individual paw prints. Again, since I didn’t plan ahead, I didn’t have cookie cutters, so I used a glass to cut out circles around the dough. Two of the paw prints were too close together for the smallest glass I had on hand, so one of the paw prints turned out off-center.

cutting out clay circles

Peel away the unused dough. The dough still soft enough I could have re-formed it into a patty and gotten more paw prints, so a little dough goes a long way!

If you want to hang your keepsakes like ornaments, grab a drinking straw from the kitchen and poke a hole in them now. I didn’t make a hole in mine because I planned to keep it on my desk rather than hanging it up.

peeling clay away from paw print keepsakes

Now it’s time to dry the salt dough. You don’t really bake it, even though it is done in the oven. The idea is to get the moisture out of the dough, not to cook it like a baked good.

It’s best to put the clay on baking paper before putting it in the oven to prevent it from sticking to the cookie sheet, but I didn’t have any baking paper. Instead, I put the clay on aluminum foil so that it would not stick.

clay paw print keepsakes in oven

Then I put the cookie sheet with the clay on it into a 200 degree oven. I checked after two hours, but since the dough was thicker than I had originally intended, it was still a little bit soft. I let the oven bake at 200 for another hour, for a total of three hours, and then I turned the oven off and left the house buy some parchment paper and sealant while the dough continued to dry.

Even after all of that, the bottom of the keepsakes still weren’t completely dry, so I got out the parchment paper I bought and put them back in the oven one more hour. I think the parchment paper would have saved me time from the beginning.

Leave the clay somewhere safe to cool completely I used the oven, because Ashton thinks that even the dried dough tastes amazing.

brown tabby cat licks paw print keepsake

Once the dough was dry and cooled, it was time to seal it. I didn’t sand the edges first, but you can if you want your keepsake to look more polished.

To seal the paw keepsake, I used three heavy coats of clear acrylic spray paint, but you can use anything that will truly seal it. The idea is to keep the moisture out. This isn’t kiln-fired clay, and it will absorb moisture from the environment. That could eventually lead to mold, and you don’t want your paw print to get moldy!

If you don’t have acrylic spray around the house, you can use nearly anything that will cover it completely:

Permanent white glue that dries clear (like Elmer’s glue)
Floor wax
Fingernail polish
Craft sealer like ModPodge

Finished salt clay paw print keepsake

Let your sealant dry completely, and then enjoy your keepsake!

DIY Cat Toy from a Toilet Paper Tube

You know the look. It’s the cat expression that says, “I don’t have anything to play with.” What can you do? With some simple items you have in your house already, you can make a new toy.

gray tabby cat

All you need is the cardboard core of a toilet paper roll, a pair of scissors, and a pen.

homemade cat toy supplies

Use your pent to mark where you plan to cut. The old saying is measure twice, cut once. I made marks 1/4″ apart.

toilet paper roll with marks on it

Use your scissors to cut the tube at the pen marks. I found it easiest to start the cuts if I pinched the tube flat temporarily so I could make one cut across and have a clean segment of the tube.

You can see in the photo below that the cardboard hoops I cut off the tube still look a little pinched from when I cut them.

sections cut from toilet paper roll

Put one of the cardboard hoops through another one.

homemade cat toy from toilet paper roll

Then add another.

homemade cat toy from toilet paper roll

Slide a fourth cardboard hoop around the outside of the other three and wiggle them around, if necessary, to make your ball.

homemade cat toy from toilet paper roll

It sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the important part is whether it helps with cat boredom.

Pierre approved.

gray tabby cat with homemade cat toy

Newton, on the other hand, disassembled the ball immediately. He is into destructiviest art.

orange tabby cat destroys homemade cat toy

If you have a cat like Newton, you could use some non-toxic glue to hold the ball together when your kitty starts playing rough with it. But it’s easy to reassemble again so there’s more fun.

Now you’ll never be out of cat toys again, no matter how many are lost forever under the refrigerator! Have you ever made a cat toy out of something you had around the house?

Newton the Brave

Newton was a kitten when he came to live with us. So we are sure that he has lived in an all-cat household since he was about eight weeks old.

orange tabby kitten

Outside of the veterinarian’s waiting room, he was never nose to nose with a dog until our neighbor Bella came to say hello at the screen door.

These photos were taken on a phone, but we wanted you to see how brave Newton was. He didn’t exactly give Bella his “I’m excited to see you” tail, but he wasn’t all fluffed up, either.

Orange tabby cat looks at white dog through screen door

Bella grew up with cats, so she was very well-behaved. She didn’t bark or act threatening, and Newton didn’t seem sure what to think of her.

Orange tabby cat looks at white dog through screen door

Newton: You don’t smell like any cat I’ve ever seen.

Orange tabby cat looks at white dog through screen door

Newton didn’t even use his airplane ears when having his little nose-to-nose visit. Talk about brave!

Orange tabby cat looks at white dog through screen door

Newton and Bella did really well saying hello, but be careful not to introduce strange dogs and cats in an uncontrolled environment. We don’t want anyone to get hurt!

Lessons from Spending Hurricane Irma with Cats

Lesson 1: High-strung cats pick up your stress

Lesson 2: Have a plan to keep cool

Lesson 3: Have a cat food back-up plan

Lesson 4: Know your veterinary emergency options

Lesson 5: Stick to routines as much as you can

DIY Cat Paw Print Keepsakes

DIY Cat Toy from a Toilet Paper Tube

Newton the Brave

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