Couple finds a big surprise in their new dream house
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 When we went to tour the property, we had seen a couple cats that were hiding in the bushes
00:05 and we didn't really think much of it. But when we moved to our new place,
00:08 we discovered that there were actually 16 cats here.
00:11 My name is Emily and this is a story about barn cats born GOVs.
00:17 We moved into our house about four and a half years ago and it really wasn't until we fully
00:23 moved in and started putting some food out for them that we saw just how many there were.
00:28 They all came running out of the woods or wherever they were hiding.
00:31 I would suspect they pretty much just stayed in the barn or the shed.
00:35 It's a very old barn so wind and snow can get in there still.
00:39 I had never owned a cat before.
00:40 It was wintertime so then I started thinking,
00:44 "How are we going to provide them proper shelter?"
00:46 It was a lot of stress and anxiety at first.
00:49 Come here, good girl.
00:50 Good girl!
00:52 There was really only a couple friendly ones and the rest of them were either feral or just like
00:58 really, really scared.
00:59 But all of them were very, very food motivated.
01:02 We converted our old breezeway at the time for them to be able to come inside during the
01:07 wintertime.
01:08 All we had to do was start getting them to learn that the food was being fed in that room and we
01:13 put a little cat door so they could kind of come and go as they please.
01:16 I started making appointments to bring them in to get spayed and neutered.
01:20 Last summer, my fiancé Dylan built them a cat house.
01:23 [Music]
01:30 Hi, Bronc!
01:30 You hanging out?
01:33 Got some other loungers in here.
01:36 We have Valencia.
01:37 We have a Princess Peach.
01:40 Oh, we even have a Squint.
01:42 It has all kinds of beds and cat toys and cat towers.
01:45 It's their temporary housing right now because we're doing a full renovation on our house.
01:53 We are going to be building them a much nicer room in our house.
01:57 Every cat, I would say, was different in terms of how they progressed in terms of socialness.
02:03 Some cats took a few years and some cats still aren't super friendly,
02:07 but I've gotten to the point where I can put flea and tick treatment on all of them.
02:10 Probably all of the orange cats when we moved in were related just because none of them were
02:15 spayed or neutered.
02:16 I would suspect that most of them are siblings or cousins, maybe like parent and babies.
02:21 When we first moved in, there were definitely cats that wandered between our property and
02:25 neighboring properties.
02:27 Nowadays, they don't leave our property at all.
02:29 I check on the cats multiple times a day and they pretty much hang out right by their cat house.
02:34 Sometimes we have visitor cats from other properties,
02:37 but our cats that we primarily care for don't leave.
02:39 One of our cats, Dusty, who unfortunately passed away over the winter,
02:43 he was our only non-orange kitty at the time.
02:46 When another cat showed up on the property, he would chase him off.
02:49 He was a great cat and I still miss him every day.
02:52 We just don't think that many of them were in good health when we moved in,
02:55 but at this point, all of the cats get whatever they need medical-wise,
02:59 so that has helped tremendously.
03:00 Kitties!
03:01 Most mornings I wake up and a handful of them are already waiting for me outside the door.
03:09 Valencia, she will run down the driveway as soon as she sees my car.
03:13 If they know I'm outside or hear me talking, they will appear and come hang out.
03:17 [Cats meowing]
03:21 We've never encountered an issue with predators before.
03:24 I'm always worried, but we've tried to make it as safe as possible for them
03:27 in many different aspects so that we hopefully never have to run into an issue like that.
03:33 I also try to tell myself we're doing the best we can.
03:35 Never want to leave the farm, okay? Always stay in the farm.
03:38 I never thought I would be a cat person.
03:40 Going from never owning a cat to take care of not only so many cats,
03:44 but they were outdoor cats and most of them were feral.
03:47 It was like going from zero to a hundred in terms of cat ownership right at the start,
03:51 but it's been a lot of joy that they've brought to our lives.
03:54 I wouldn't trade it for the world.
03:56 [Cats meowing]
03:58 [Music]