So I got a kitty. My ex had named him after a grunge singer, but I wasn't having that. Besides, if I'm taking the little guy to the vet and buying his food, I'm naming him. I decided he needed a dago name. His official name is Vincenzo, but he goes by Vinny or Vin. And he answers to none of those.
He's watching me type this right now. He's fascinated by the mouse (or cursor, or whatever else is moving on my tv/monitor). He thinks he's the boss of everything, so I call him the Capo Di Tutti Kitty. See what I did there? If you're Italian or you watched a lot of Sopranos, you get that. That's pretty fucking clever and you know it.
Anyway, now I'm not just a single guy with a cat, I'm the crazy cat tree guy. I decided he needed something to climb on and have adventures in, so I started pricing out cat trees at Petco. I saw these:
They were ok, but they were like $200 - $300! I couldn't believe how expensive the damn things were. Especially considering they looked pretty flimsy. They don't even carpet the undersides, and they're just stapled. I decided I could do better building one myself.
I wanted to combine as many elements as possible. You know, to give Vinny all the features a cat could want. It had to have different levels, of course, and some place to hide in or tunnel through. I spent the better part of the next MONTH building this thing, and I even though I had made some sketches, I still pretty much made it up as I went along.
I searched and searched for carpet. There was nothing decent on craigslist, and no store would give me anything for free except tiny little scraps. Finally I found a place that sold me a remnant for cheap. Later I went back and got the rest of it. I went to home depot and picked up some plywood. Time to do this thing.
So I knew I should start with a base. I tried folding the carpet around a piece of plywood. It worked, but I quickly learned that I was doing things the hard way:
I had picked up a couple of wood rounds at Home Depot when I was there, and decided to just go ahead and cover those with carpet before I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them.
The way I did the rounds was much easier. I just traced it on the carpet, cut that out and hot glued it on (the hot glue gun was my friend, except when it was burning the first five layers of skin off my arm). Then I did the same to the other side, then cut a strip and glued that to it around the edge. Then I put a little bead of hot glue in the seam and pinched it all the way around so that you couldn't really see the edge. Worked like a charm. No more folding! Also, I had been using a crappy little staple gun. I scrapped that and went with just glue. The staples come out and don't really help. I suggest glue only (or a big ass staple gun, but glue is easier).
I knew I didn't want the second level much higher than 2 feet, so I cut some 2 x 4s and wrapped them with sisal rope (at HD, but OSH has it for cheaper). I nailed it in, wrapped it and tapped it down with a hammer as I went, then nailed down the other end:
Next I cut holes in the carpet of the base where the posts would go. It's easier to do this than to cut carpet to go around the posts after the fact. I attached the posts, then put another square on top, and now I had a little kitty temple.
My foreman inspects the work:
He later informed me that one of the posts was crooked, so I had to unscrew it and move it. That was a bitch. He never let up on me. The guy friggin' slept at the job site!
Next up: Level Two
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