About Us

Hello. My name is Neko Katz. I am one of the cats here at DayCreek that run this joint. Back in 1996 I wasn’t born yet, but my ancestors thought that they would like to live the good life in a rural setting far, far away from the urban sprawl of Chicago. They directed their “masters” (Alan and Jo Stankevitz) to purchase land and build us our dream home. (We call our humans who feed us “masters” but we laugh hysterically at that word every time we talk among ourselves.)

We thought of a number of places to build: The Catskills, Kitty Hawk, Morris or maybe somewhere in the Purrrmian Basin. But we really enjoy eating fish. With 16,000 freshwater lakes loaded with fish, the state of Minnesota became our top pick. Plus, where else can you find lutefisk?

In 1996 our masters purchased land in southeast Minnesota and “our paw” aka Alan began foundation construction in the autumn of 1998 with the excavation of the rubble trench foundation. Progress was slow however as Alan was still employed at the time and worked on it on weekends and vacation time. It wasn’t until the spring of 2001 that construction began with earnest with the mortaring of the first cordwood wall.

Alan had friends, family and a few guests that would chip in every once and a while and lend a hand but the majority of the house was Alan’s work. The only real exception was the roof construction which was done by a roof contractor.

Alan really took his time building the house. In his defense, he only worked on weekdays and during warm-weather months but come on! A cat-life is only about 1/5th of a human life-span!

Finally our masters moved us into our beautiful cordwood kitty palace in January of 2016. The house is very energy efficient and is assisted by solar-generated electricity and heat.

We just love the warm floors, a cozy wood stove and plenty of beams and windowsills. This place is heaven on earth!

There are always projects to do around the homestead and please be sure to check out the DayCreek Journal for the latest mews.

Cat Mom & Cat Dad (Jo &Alan)