Cats Herd You

We love our cat tree. The head peep made it herself more than fifteen years ago, and it has traveled thousands of miles and belonged to two generations of cats. The sisal on it doesn’t last forever, though. We have been complaining for a while that it was time to give us fresh sisal for our claws. We just can’t get a good grip in it when it looks like this.

And the patch job the head peep did on the other leg was really starting to unravel.

The rug on the platforms needs replacing, too, but we don’t want to push our luck. We have been lobbying for the sisal to be upgraded. And this was the big day!

So off came nearly all of the original sisal, all the way down to the wood. You can see that our cat tree is actually made of landscape timbers. Those make the tree much heavier than the ones you see at your local pet store. It was obviously not built with the idea of having to move it in and out of upper-floor apartments.

There was a lot of sisal rope, hot glue, some u-nails, and a few HBO words. And then…. nice, fresh scratching sisal, rising four feet on the highest riser.

Inspector Newton: I’m going to get some serious use out of this as soon as you turn that camera off.