Cleaning cat enclosures

Tomorrow will be my final sign off for cleaning the cats enclosures.  So I thought I would share the process.  And I thought it would be fun to use pictures. 

We start by getting our buckets together.  We use these.

We use a trash bag that we clip on one half of the bucket.  The other half has a small white container to hold my "tools".  I fill the  bucket and white container with a splash of bleach.  My cleaning tools go into my little white container and my poop collecting tool goes into the bucket.  Water is added to dilute the bleach.  

 Our enclosures look like this.

We never ever ever go in the enclosure, unless the cat is not there.  So how do we get the poop out everyday. It's easy really!  First we walk around the enclosure to locate the cat.  This is also how we spot the poop.  Each cat is different but most have a "poop spot".  So my first tool is a pole with a curved end to pull the poop to the wall of the enclosure.

Next I use my tongs to remove it. My hands never cross through the fence.

I pick up the poop with the tongs and put it into the trash bag.  The tongs go back into the bucket.  Next I go  over to the "lock out" that we feed the cats in.  This is where their food plates and water bowls are.   I use the tongs to pull out any remaining food. Then I use these tools to clean bowl, plates, and stone. A stone is in each lockout, the food dishes are on the stone.

I use a hose to rinse everything, fill the water bowl and I am good to go!

Any abnormal feces or large amounts of food left over are recorded in our animal logs.  This is what we do first thing every morning.  Even in a tropical storm.  :)

Tropical storm

Working in a tropical storm gives you a new appreciation for the term "soaking wet".  It rained non stop for about 36 hrs.  Of course that doesn't stop us from taking care of the cats.  While cleaning enclosures yesterday morning it felt as though someone was dumping buckets of water over my head.  The cats were hiding from the storm as best as possible.  When we clean we must make sure we locate the cats.  This can be tricky when its dark out and they are hiding in a den.  So with flashlights we made sure to find them all.  This morning the rain has stopped and it allowed us all a break.  There are lots of branches that came down, and cleaning that up was our morning task. But first every volunteer and intern was searching every enclosure to find our cats and make sure none were harmed in the night.  This was much easier than yesterday.  Almost every cat came out to say hello this morning.  The cats in the sections I am responsible for all came to the fence to greet me.  I think they also wanted to chat about the crazy storm, or at least that is what I assume they are saying.  They seemed to be as happy to see me as I was to see them. My fingers are crossed, hoping that there will be no more rain.  The weather channel says there is a 90% chance of more rain this afternoon.  My house also flooded last night.  I shared this with the cats so they would know I feel their pain.Thankfully I do have the day off, I have lots of small rugs and loads of towels to wash and dry.  If we get more rain I have nothing left that is dry and can absorb more water!!!

This is the field behind my house.  This is also the back of the sanctuary.  It is usually a grassy field but is now a pond where the ducks can swim.  If we get more rain it will be deep enough for me to swim in!

Reno climbs a tree to retrieve a watermelon

China Doll goes swimming for a watermelon

New pillows for the gift shop

Natasha: Lynx

Jade: African Leopard

Canyon: Sand Cat

Simba: Asian Leopard

Banjo: Bear Cat

Jumanji: Black leopard

Interns with tiger China Doll

Tiger enrichment activities

Cougar Missouri in surgery

Narla

Reno: Leopard

Chameron: Lion and Zabu's mate

Zabu: White Tiger

Simba: Leopard

Apollo: Siberian Lynx

Beautiful Enya, the small squeak you here is her talking

Shere Khan and China Doll playing

Shere Khan

China Doll

Pictures of today's activities

Project day

Today was a fun filled day.  On Thursdays there are no public tours so all  of us focus on projects and enrichment for our cats. One of our bobcats got a spruced up hand made lean to and den.  Using branches we have picked up from the ongoing storms as well as palms we have cut from our plants we were able to make great structures.  And to top it all off we planted some new flowers to fill in her area and give her some places to hide.  A big part of big cat rescue is that we never force the cats to be social.  During tours the cats may chose to show themselves or stay hidden if they feel the need to hide.  All of our work today drew the attention of most of the cats.  Listening to the mountain lions meow ( yes they make a sweet squeaky meow) and the tigers "chuff" to say hello is awesome.  Today is also the first time I was able to go behind the fences and into the enclosures!!! It was awesome.

My first days

Life has been very crazy since I arrived at Big Cat Rescue.  My days have been long and I am still getting settled.  I will tell you all about it tomorrow. :)  Also I am having a few issues trying to post my videos and pictures.  I will continue to try.