Refugee Upgrade!

Those of you have have remained faithful to my writings (even with the lengthy gaps in between each post), will have read the words 'feral cats' several times! Some of these precious souls have become part of our family, some have been homed to special people, some were released after trapping and neutering and have never been seen again.....and some have simply remained where they were trapped and later released, wobbly from the anaesthetic, but free to live without breeding.

Two of these gorgeous girls live just around the corner, and because they were trapped and fixed in July and come from Jacobsbaai, it was fitting to give them names beginning with...J

So Jasmine and Juniper they are! Lovingly referred to by us as 'The Refugees'. Our wonderful neighbours gave us a lovely kennel for them, and so they are warm and fed and safe and happy. Jasmine has become tameish.... she sits on the wall where I feed and waits until she sees me walk into the driveway of the lovely people who let me meander up their drive daily to feed them. Once the food is down I can stroke her, but not Juniper, she is still very wary and waits in the background until all the lovey-dovey stuff is done!

The Refugees little home and garden!

And so it has been like that for over a year now.

But...... suddenly there are ants!! Big brown ants. Big biting brown ants who are obviously looking for water and for the last week or so the water bowl (aren't ice-cream containers handy things?) has been literally black with the ants that are in or on or around it. So much so that yesterday when we went to feed, even the food bowl was crawling and Jasmine was standing there shaking her paws and biting her toes. When I put the food down for her, she was not able to stand long enough to eat and she kept meowing at me and jumping onto the wall as if to say 'Look here, we have a problem.... please fix it!'

So. Between Rob and me, we came up with a plan! See the pic below!

Assembled and ready!

An old gate, 4 bricks, 4 ice-cream containers with their lids, and sadly but necessary.... ant spray. Rob sprayed the area and I climbed over the wall where Rob handed me the bricks, ice-cream containers, lids and gate! Alfie, I might add, just sat in the car and watched!

I smoothed away some of the leaves and stuff (lovely compost actually), placed the lids on the ground, containers on the lids and bricks in the containers! We poured water into the containers making sure that the bricks were wet too and then placed the gate on top.

Water.......

And look!!

And food!

A beautiful table for them, hopefully ant-free, that will allow them to eat in peace even if a marauding band of killer ants march by!!!

I just hope that my Refugees appreciate the trouble that we have gone to for them....

But they are worth it!!