The time of cats was finally upon us. We could wait no longer. I combed ads of shelters and rescue organizations and focused on 6 cats at 3 organizations, and narrowed it to two. The fosters were all ready to place them once we qualified, so the rush to furnish the house with some cat stuff was on!
Awhile back, I decided to try making furniture. While I’m sure I could be good at it, I made the mistake of trying to make a model of a chair out of plywood, so I could make all my mistakes on something cheap. I didn’t realize at the time that ply is not a great stand-in for solid wood, and got pretty far with it until it was time to put my finished panels together. So, I mentally noted that next time I’ll work with a low-cost solid wood, but in the meantime, I had all these chair parts with no real end-game for them. Moving them from our last place kinda felt like a failure.
The 4 corner posts were an obvious upcycle, but it wasn’t until the weekend we confirmed we were adopting cats that it occurred to me, if I cut the tenons off the panels, I could make a box base for the posts. I drew up a rough sketch and worked out basic dimensions, then made a 1″:1′ drawing to see how it would work. Luckily, we have lots of scrap wood, and I made a few unexpected workarounds along the way.
I didn’t take many pictures of the progress, because I was pretty focused and on a deadline, but I managed to work it all out by Sunday night for the Monday morning cat delivery. It’s much bigger than any cat tree need be, but I like that it houses the litter box in a space that can turn into a lounge area, and that they have a high place to perch. The fact that it looks like craftsman furniture will be a plus if it has to move to another room. And the biggest thing is, I don’t have dead-end project parts sitting around, making me feel like a failure. So far, they like it too.
4001 Berenice 