Jybow's vacation home

Can you see it? There's Jybows cat house, up off the ground away from the worry of dogs. Not Jybow's worry of dogs, but Jimmy's worry about dogs getting to close to Jybow his cat.
In this second picture Jimmy has put Jybow into her new spacious cat house. Jimmy even stole one of my good sheets to line the bottom of it...nothing is too good for his cat. He only built this shelf because of a beautiful redwood child's playhouse up on stilts that I thought would make a perfect hideaway for the cats. It only cost $300+ and was a far cry from the first one I picked out for them at $7000.00+ to which Jimmy immediately said, "NO!"
It's simple, sheek and protected from the weather and look how she loves to sleep next to it. hehehe. And it's free.

Last night Jimmy lost Jybow and couldn't find her anywhere, but he forgot to look in her new vacation home, so I sent him back outside to look and he came in boasting that Jybow was fast asleep inside her new home.

Jybow used to have her very own little house with door flaps, but Callie & her kittens have taken it over and Jybow won't even step on that half of the yard anymore. She's had to even give up her hammock and her favorite tree for those kittens. We're hoping (well I'm hoping) that she'll get used to them soon, but I'm afraid that the mama cat isn't allowing any of the older cats near her babies yet.

Jybow is supposed to be getting accustomed to sleeping outside because of our scheduled pool party trip. The other two house cats love staying out all night, but Jimmy is having a hard time leaving Jybow out all night long. He's not been getting much sleep....of course you know that I mean Jimmy isn't getting much sleep. He's up all night making sure that Jybow is still safe and doing okay and sometimes Jimmy even brings Jybow back inside (even if the cat doesn't want to come in) so that he (Jimmy) can get some sleep.

Last year we didn't go on a vacation because Jybow wasn't up to it. This year we've been planning & training that cat to stay outside and like it. The trouble is the cat likes it, but Jimmy isn't comfortable with it. So what can I do? Any suggestions? Boarding the cat is out because Jimmy says it would hate being caged up. And letting someone keep her at their house is out, because Jimmy says she would hate being in an unfamiliar place. She's going to be fine here at home with someone familiar to her stopping in daily to check on her, to let her in if she wants to come in and then to put her back out....the same routine that she has now with the same person who is here everyday, our daughter. Other than asking Suzanne to spend the nights here, there's nothing more that we can do, and I'm not going to ask her to do that...she lives close enough to stop by as often as she likes, and if she wants to spend the night here it's perfectly okay.

Can you believe that Jimmy was a cat hater until 2005? That is until this tiny little orange ball of fur came into our lives one cold Fall evening and began sleeping between the button holes of Jimmy's warm flannel shirts. They napped together throughout the day and the kitten would curl up on my head at night and Jimmy would snatch her and put her on his belly. His excuse was that she purred to loudly in his ear when she slept on my head, so she needed to be further down in the bed and on him. He named the kitten Jybow after his late father who called all the new baby animals on their farm, little Jybows, and it soon became his cat.

Only cat lovers can appreciate this story.