Cat perch

[Larry Klaaren]

I am making a cat perch and have some questions.

The porch will have a "story" every ten inches or so and will be about six to six and a half feet tall. My wife feels a six inch hole in each layer is large enough. I am not quite so sure. Any experience out there with this? Most of the layers will be eighteen inches square. Each layer will be alike, made from a template, but the layers will each be set differently, so the holes will not be directly above each other.

I am thinking about making the top two stories larger and using a cantilever type of design. To keep it from becoming top-heavy, but not use up too much floor space, I was considering making the lowest level over a trap-door type of box and putting weights or sandbags in that. Thoughts?

The third question is: since I dislike the shaggy carpet look, any ideas on a surface? I might velcro a pet bed on the top two layers. We have two cats. The king and queen of the home are Oreo and Leo. We see them when they want us to, so we are hoping this will increase their visibility.

A dog thinks you are God. A cat thinks you are staff.

Thanks,
Larry

[Thomas Bank]

My father built a cat tree for their cats - who weren't too interested in it. So it ended up over at my house and two of my cats make fair use of it. The holes in it are 7"∅ and my cats have no problems with that. However, my parents' cats are larger bodied and that may have been part of the reason that they didn't care for it.

[Curt Harms]

Here are a couple pics of a ladder SWMBO bought. It's made of MDF which hasn't held up well-I had to screw a piece of plywood to the spine- covered with a sisal-like fabric and carpeting. Sisal or Sisal-like is recommended for a scratching surface. I've seen cat furniture which looks like the vertical surfaces were covered with 1/2" rope. I don't know how the rope was fastened--I guess you could use adhesive or narrow crown staples or both.

I don't know how your cats behave but one of the favorite uses of this ladder is one cat will be chasing the other, both going as fast as they can go and the one on the lead will take a flying leap onto the ladder. It needs to be fastened well or have a good base.
pic1.JPG
pic2.JPG

And here's one of the perps. Dunno why his left eye has the blue halo.
Buddy.jpg

[Dave Gaul]

One of my first ww'ing projects actually! Base was made from OSB framed with pine, and it is quite stable at 7' tall. Good recommendation on the Sisal, however, it would be best to use woven Sisal and not Sisal rope.. the rope can have fibers that get stuck in the cats' paws and becomes very uncomforatable for them. Woven Sisal can be found pretty cheap on ebay or the like. Most of the vertical surfaces on mine are wrapped with woven sisal, and the cats love to scratch on it, and after 4+ years the sisal has shown no signs of wear! Most of the horizontal surfaces are covered with synthetic sheap's skin carpet material, found at a pet store, which has a backing that won't fray when cut to size. I also use a round concrete pre-from to create a hanging tunnel, and a couple of our cats love to hang out in there. I'll try to get a pic up later.

Oh, and 6" diameter holes should be fine, unless you have very large cats. The typical cat door flap is about 5" x 7".