I have been volunteering with Operation Hood for the past few years. Operation Hood helps feral cats; I was initially drawn to them because of my love for cats. So when looking for ideas for my Eagle Scout Project, I decided to help Operation Hood by making cat houses.
I originally had the idea in March, but due to COVID-19, I couldn’t begin until mid-July. During that time, I decided to reuse some old cat houses my grandfather had in storage rather than start from scratch. We also converted old dog boxes that needed to be cleaned, sanitized, and painted. After about three days of hard work transferring the cat houses to my house and then to Operation Hood, I finally could start the project. The hardest part of the project was working around the weather. Everything was planned out, but unfortunately, it began to rain a lot, like every weekend. We had to work around it. Eventually, we had to bring out canopies so we could start working on putting the fronts on the houses, staining the houses, and building the cat tree. Then we had to postpone painting the wooden ramps until the following weekend due to the rain.
This project was harder than I thought it would be. I had to figure out how to relay the ideas that I had on paper and in my head to my Scout volunteers. The project helped me with my leadership, planning, and communication skills. I also learned to plan for anything, especially the weather. During this project, some of our wood was cut wrong as well, so we had to adjust our plans slightly.
I found my favorite aspect of the project was giving back to an organization that I truly believe in. They are doing such great work and care so much for the cats. It was a wonderful feeling seeing (within 5 minutes of completing the project) cats utilizing what we just built. It made the project worth it.
