For my gold award project, I focused on an environmental issue that revolves around the poor quality and limited amount of shelters and habitats feral cats are provided. Feral cats are the offspring of stray or abandoned household pets. Raised without human contact, they quickly revert to a wild state and form colonies wherever food and shelter are available. As a result, feral cats are usually scared of humans and those in pounds and shelters have a 100% death rate. Therefore, most feral cats tend to stay in the wild, but loss of habitat results in difficulty to survive.

building the frame	floor installation

To address this issue, I built a durable house that prevents water from coming in the buildings during the winter for feral cats and raccoons at Tule Ponds in Fremont. With house leaks from the rain, and the increase of feral cats and raccoons in the present shelters, some animals have no choice but to take shelter under poor covers during storms. This is detrimental because the likelihood of them drowning is rapidly increased. In addition, in the 2015 winter and El Nino storm, about 10 opossums, raccoons, skunks and cats died. However, with new waterproof houses, more raccoons and feral cats will have a warm and spacious place to live.