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I wasn't sure where to put this, but as it was a diy project, I hope this is the right forum for it.
Much to my kitties pleasure I have finally completed their new cat tower. I wanted to make something that was sturdy enough for my three cats (one is a baby boy maine coon) to throw themselves at without having to worry about it tipping over.
I found an old cupboard that was chipped so was going to be thrown out so this became part of my construction. I also found an old table top and a drawer that I could use.
I went around to a few of the local carpet places and asked if they had any offcuts that they were throwing out. Of the five places that I went to, two of them were incredibly helpful and went climbing around in the rafters finding nice pieces for me.
We had a few peices of wood sitting around from some earlier projects so I drew up my plans and my partner cut some holes in the top and front of the cupboard and made up this for me:
I bought some sisal rope and put it on and covered it in carpet and this is the result:
It measures 1.5m high, 112cm wide and 55cm deep. I left the hinges on the cupboard so I can open the door to clean out the inside (and retrieve the socks that Fleetwood keeps stealing) and change the bedding. There is a half shelf inside there so they can sit in there and pounce out at anyone that comes near (though they tend to get walloped over the head by cats from above
) The drawer up the top has a pillow in it so they can survey thier kingdom in comfort from above.A few things that I learnt while making this were;
no matter how much rope you think you need, you will need a lot more (I used 90 metres
),doing the corners with the carpet is really hard to get neat,
wrapping the sisal rope takes forever,
lock the cats in a different room, as soon as you start attaching the rope there will be a cat (in my case three) attacking any part of the rope they can reach. You ARE going to get yourself tangled up in it, you don't want a cat in attack mode tangled up with you when you can't defend yourself.
Same also goes for the carpet, as soon as you start attaching it they will want to be involved. I thought that they wouldn't like the hammering but apparently my lot took it as a challenge. Trying to attach carpet to the underside of a shelf after wedging yourself in underneath it, holding the carpet in place with one hand, hammer in the other hand while keeping your cats off your head with any other movement you can make gets old pretty fast.
My cats are very happy with their new tower, and it is encouraging them all to play together which is lovely to watch. It's very sturdy so it should last them a while (I hope...... I'm not in any hurry to do that again)
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We didn't use the rope, but carpeting it was a major undertaking that took a lot of measuring, cutting, and sheer elbow grease. And yup, the kittens were all over it--they knew it was for them. After he finished, I asked him if he'd make another one, and he said, "No way! I'm out of the cat condo business". So he's not in any hurry to do that again either. 
awesome job! way to go mum, I can see the furrys are quite pleased.
