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TugaTheCat

The diary

From the garden to the sofa

The garden had cats before Tuga — her mother among them. She turned up in June 2025, about the size of a hand. These are the photographs I've taken along the way, in no order of importance, only in order of time.

  1. Tuga's Friends

    Instead of buying a shelter, I made one

    I said here that I'd buy a small shelter. I ended up building it. It's a polystyrene transport box, lined with cardboard inside, wrapped in plastic outside so it doesn't take on water, with a small hole in one side and straw in it. Over the entrance I taped a tray to work as a porch against the rain. It stands on four paving blocks, well off the soil. It cost me the price of the straw. There are two shelters in the garden now: this one at the front of the house, the wooden one still round the back. What's left isn't up to me — they have to decide to go in.

  2. Tuga's Friends

    The shelter is on the wrong side of the garden

    Kitty's kittens have picked their spot and they don't leave it: under a tree, tucked against the hedge. I put two dishes right there and I keep filling them through the day; they only move off in the late afternoon, to play with their mother. What worries me is the shelter — it's on the other side of the garden and they won't go near it. In the guide I wrote that a shelter in the wrong place stands empty all winter, and now the example is me. I'm buying a small one to put where they already are, before the cold sets in properly.

    That shelter, and the food that goes with it, come out of my own savings like everything else here. If you'd like to help, this is the way.

    How to help
  3. Tuga

    The cold is here. The garden round happens anyway.

    Winter is coming on fast and you can already feel it, though it's still early for snow. Tuga spends more hours indoors now, but every single day she asks to go out and do her round of the garden and check on her friends. Inside she's the simplest cat I could have asked for: she wants food, she wants to be stroked, and she wants a cardboard box. A parcel arrived and the rest of the afternoon sorted itself out.

  4. Tuga's Friends

    The shelter, ready for another winter

    Spent the afternoon fixing the roof and changing all the straw. The new roof overhangs the walls further than the old one did, so rain falls clear of the wood, and the entrance now has a cover to break the wind. It's ready for the winter of 2026/2027. Whether they use it is up to them — I'll only find out when the first real frost arrives.

  5. Tuga's Friends

    It wasn't winter after all

    In September I wrote here that Kitty was eating four pouches at a sitting and that it must be her getting ready for winter. I was wrong: she was already nursing. There are three of them, about a month old. I leave kitten pouches and junior dry food beside their hiding place and walk away — they only come out of the bushes once I'm well gone. The about page says that feeding without neutering makes a colony grow. Here's the proof.

  6. Tuga's Friends

    The shelter has its straw

    Next to where Kitty eats there's a wooden shelter with straw inside to keep warm. That afternoon she preferred the ledge in the sun. When the first frost comes, the shelter is ready.

  7. Tuga's Friends

    This is Kitty

    I finally managed to photograph her head-on. She's always around — I'd guess she's about three — and since autumn arrived she's been eating far more: four 85 g pouches without a second thought. I think she's getting ready for winter.

  8. Tuga

    One year on

    May 2026. From a cardboard box to a hanging chair, cushions and all. Roughly a year after she turned up in the garden.

  9. Tuga

    Late afternoon

    Same day, a few hours later. Early-spring light at the end of the afternoon is the best this garden has to offer.

  10. Tuga

    The first sun

    March. The snow went and she went straight back to the same spot as always — the corner of the patio the sun reaches first.

  11. Tuga

    Salmon

    February. There was salmon left over from dinner and she appeared out of nowhere, as though she'd heard the packet open from the other side of the house.

  12. Tuga

    The house is hers

    From a cardboard box in the garden to the living-room rug, among cushions and soft toys. Eight months after she turned up, there was no longer any doubt about who that space belonged to.

  13. Tuga

    Top of the willow

    Snow still on the ground and up the willow she went, staying there a long while, watching the garden from above. An indoor cat doesn't do this; she never stopped being a bit of the garden.

  14. Tuga

    Snow up to her belly

    A week later she was crossing the yard in leaps, snow up to her belly. She adapted faster than I did.

  15. Tuga

    First snow

    January, and her first proper Polish winter. She sat still for a long while, staring at it, before daring to put a paw down.

  16. Tuga

    October orange

    Clear sky, low sun, and the last week when there was still no hurry to go back inside.

  17. Tuga

    The green jumper

    Autumn. The mornings had turned cold enough for a jumper, and she let herself be dressed with a patience she never showed again.

  18. Tuga

    The cables are mine now

    July. She found the earphones on the table and decided, without consulting anyone, that they belonged to her.

  19. Tuga

    Ambush

    Hidden in the long grass, keeping an eye on the patio. From here on, the whole garden was hers.

  20. Tuga

    Hunting weeds

    Head down among the weeds, rehearsing an instinct she didn't yet know she had. At that age, anything that moves is prey.

  21. Tuga

    Two weeks later

    Two weeks on she was crossing the lawn by herself, tail in the air. Eating on her own came before working out what paws are for.

  22. Tuga

    One syringe at a time

    By the next day it was serious: kitten replacement milk, every few hours, fed by hand. A cat that age doesn't eat on its own — it depends entirely on whoever found it.

  23. Tuga

    The box and the saucer

    She turned up in the garden, about the size of a hand. A cardboard box on its side, a saucer, and the hope that she'd stay. I know now that cow's milk is bad for kittens — at the time it was what was there.

  24. Tuga's Friends

    Three on the blocks

    October 2024. Three of the Friends perched on the blocks in the morning sun, watching the garden wake up. They're not mine and never will be — but dinner is here.

  25. Tuga's Friends

    Before her, the mother

    March 2024. This is Tuga's mother, by the hedge, more than a year before her daughter turned up on the grass. The garden was cat territory long before I noticed.