Street cats in winter: food, water and somewhere warm

They learn the time long before they learn to trust. By seven or eight in the morning they are all in the same spot, waiting for me to turn up. Nobody taught them this: they worked the routine out on their own.

And that isn't a charming detail, it's half the job done. A cat that knows when it eats doesn't spend the morning hunting for food — and in winter every calorie it doesn't burn is a calorie left over to keep it warm.

Pick a time and a place, and don't change them. Rain, snow or ice. Of everything written on this page, this is the part that counts most.

Early morning, as soon as the sun is up. They're already there waiting.

Mid-afternoon, if I spot them crossing the garden from the window. I take more food out and change the water while I'm there.

After sunset — and this is the most important of the three. My experience is that they always come looking for food as the sun goes down, and it makes sense: the night is what kills, and a cat that goes to sleep with a full stomach has something to burn until morning.

In summer the logic flips and water is what matters. But in winter it's this: never let them go into the night on an empty stomach.

This is the part nobody believes until they see it. Some of mine got used to eating off the ground and others out of bowls. And they don't swap: put the food of a ground-eater in a bowl and he won't touch it. He looks, he sniffs, and he walks away.

It isn't stubbornness. A colony cat decides whether something is safe by what it already knows, and any change is a reason to be suspicious. Changing the bowl is changing the rules halfway through.

Notice who eats where, and respect it. It costs nothing and it saves food rotting on the ground.

In winter it freezes and in summer it dries up. It's my biggest problem at both ends of the year and there is no perfect fix.

What I do: put the bowl where it catches the sun. It won't stop ice on a night well below zero, but it delays it, and during the day the water goes back to being liquid.

What actually solves it is going out and changing it. Fresh water in the morning and again at the end of the day. No trick replaces that.

A deep, wide bowl freezes more slowly than a shallow one. Thick plastic or ceramic, never metal — it cools too fast and in hard frost it can stick to a tongue.

In summer it's the other way round: shade, and change the water even more often. With the heat here, yesterday's water is no good today.

At the start of winter I mix a powdered vitamin supplement into the food. Once a day, for seven days.

I won't give you a brand because I can't remember it and I'd rather not invent one. Any vitamin supplement for cats will do, and a pet shop or a vet can point you to one.

The care I take is to put it in every portion, not just one. In a colony you don't get to choose who eats first, and I want them all to have the same chance.

I bought it on a Polish selling site, wooden and flat-packed. It wasn't expensive, and putting it together took me an afternoon.

What makes it work isn't the wood: it's the insulation in the walls, the two compartments inside, and the entrance being small. I've written all of that up in a guide of its own, with photos of the build — it wouldn't fit here without crowding out everything else.

Away from people and cars. My cats are wary: if the shelter sits somewhere people walk past, they won't go in. It can be the best shelter in the world and it will stand empty all winter.

Don't stand it straight on the ground. Mine sits on three concrete blocks: air passes underneath and damp from the soil doesn't climb into the wood.

Turn the entrance away from the prevailing wind and, if you can, tuck it against a wall or a hedge that breaks the gusts.

Once it's in place, forget about it. Don't go peering inside to see whether they're home. If they feel it's somewhere people turn up, it stops being a hiding place — and a shelter that isn't a hiding place is no use at all.

Not hay — straw. They look like the same thing and they aren't. Hay is dried grass: it soaks up moisture, rots and goes mouldy. Straw is hollow inside, it doesn't get waterlogged the same way, and they can burrow into it and build a nest.

No blankets or bedding. It looks cosy, but cloth absorbs moisture from the air and from wet fur, and on a freezing night you end up with a frozen rag where the warmth was meant to be.

Not on the ground. Damp rises through the wood and never leaves it.

No big entrance. A door the size of a cat is plenty. Big doors are for the wind.

No metal bowls — not for food, not for water.

Wet food below freezing turns to ice in minutes. On those nights dry food is worth more, because it lasts until morning, and the pouch can wait for the first meal of the day.