Large Cat Tree

About

Cost: $ $ $ $ $

Difficulty: • • • • •

Time: 6h00

A large cat tree for the little fuzzballs
! Click the images to see the whole thing !

We already had a second hand cat tree, but as the kittens grew up it seemed they needed a bigger one.

Cat trees can be very expensive for such a simple thing, so my boyfriend and I decided to make our own. (Actually I came up with the idea, he got dragged in and became enthusiastic about it too)

The pole is a cardboard pipe that our kitchen floor (venyl) came on, it is furnished with carpet that I got for free at Carpet Right (it was a left over piece, just ask the store attendant nicely). It's tacked in place.
Particle board for the house, ground plate and top plateau.
Some hemp rope, and the most expensive part was the furry brown fabric used to furnish the top plateau and the little house with. However, you could of course use whatever soft fabric you have lying around.
I added some foam from an old mattress for padding on the top plateau.

The pole has a block of wood (leftovers we had, you can ask to look in the garbage bin of your nearby hardware store), painstakingly sawed and sanded into an exact fitting shape (this is the tricky part), inside it at the bottom and one at the top. They are screwed in place from the sides. The cardboard of the pole is thick enough for that.
Those wooden blocks are in turn screwed onto the ground plate and the top plate.

Be sure to first think things through thoroughly and sketch it from all sides, adding the measurements, before you start cutting/sawing anything. Pay special attention to the order of doing things. It's not nice for the kitties if there's screws sticking out everywhere. So, also make sure that the tacks are firmly embedded.

Our cats love it. It gives them a very nice view of the room and out the window.

The hemp rope somewhere halfway on the pole is there to hide the 'seam' of the two carpet pieces we needed to cover the whole pole.

The furry fabric is tacked on and the edges are sewn together.

We hung a piece of rabbit fur on a piece of elastic for extra fun.