SAANICH – Sheila is walking her orange cat – named Mr. Pickles –on a leash. They've been doing this daily since Sheila first found him abandoned.

"He was skin and bone, traumatized," she says. "I wasn't even planning to get a cat. He came running to me and I touched him and that was it." That was "love at first sight". A love that has been – in the 12 years since – not without its challenges.

"He has a lot of issues," Sheila explains with a laugh. "No one in the neighbourhood could let their cats out because [Mr. Pickles] had to rule the roost!"

Walking Mr. Pickles on a leash was one solution. Hiring somebody to build 'cat enclosures' was the other.

Sheila's backyard features a feline-friendly, jungle-gym of sorts – made-up of a series of enclosed ramps, stairs and walkways. She says Mr. Pickles "definitely" loves reigning over his new safer domain.

"Then we decided that since we had this wonderful enclosure," Sheila says. "Why not get a few more cats?"

Sheila rescued a black cat named Kara, before making another suggestion to her family. "Wouldn't it be neat to get an all-white cat to go with the all-black cat?"

She tried fostering a white cat with Annabelle, with a tortoiseshell kitten named Willow. Sheila laughs that they were "definitely" foster failures, and ended-up adopting the pair.

The newly formed feline family proved to be such a success, Sheila decided to expand their custom cat-enclosures to the front of the house. "I said, 'do whatever you feel,'" Sheila recalls telling John from 'Catscape'. "So that's what he did! It's great!"

Now the six levels of enclosed 'cat-walks' wrap around the front of the house, attached to the wall outside Sheila and her husband's bedroom.

"They sound like a herd of elephants!," she laughs. "They love it at night!"

Mr. Pickles – on the other hand – loves using the enclosures whenever the others are not. "He just wants to be the only one," Sheila says.

While his siblings race up and down in the front-yard, Mr. Pickles stays in the back, curled up next to his Sheila, who's shown him that 'first sight' love can become unconditional love.

"If you want to have rescue cats, especially cats that have been through some trauma, you've got to put the effort in," she says. "You've got to give them a good life."