diy Archives - Cats Herd You

DIY: Thinking Outside the Box about Litterboxes

One of the top reasons that people surrender their cats is for not using the litterbox. Even after being checked by a vet to be sure that there’s no physical reason for not using the box, some cats don’t use their litterbox because they don’t like the box itself, often because it’s too small. Cats prefer a litter box at least 1.5 times the length of their body, and some cats don’t like having their tail touching the side of the box while they do their business.

A recent trip to a local big box pet store showed that the largest litterbox for sale there, advertised as sized extra large, measured 16.5″ wide x 22″ long. If you have a big kitty, this may not be big enough for him to feel comfortable. But what can you do about it if it’s the biggest cat box manufactured?

Think outside the box and use something that wasn’t manufactured to be a litterbox.

Mortar Mixing Tray

Newton inspects mortar mixing tray next to his litterbox

A typical 26 gallon concrete mixing tray or mixing tub is 36″ x 24″ with a depth of about 8,” but they come as large as 60″ x 36.” This width and depth increase may be enough to make your kitty more comfortable using the box. As a bonus, most concrete mixing trays have rounded corners at the bottom that make it easier for you to scoop the litter without things getting stuck in the corners. You can find them at your local home improvement store, and they are sold in different materials, some more durable than others.

Sweater/Blanket Storage Bin

Clear plastic sweater or blanket storage bins come in an amazing variety of sizes and shapes. Some are wide and low, intended for storing items under your bed. These long, somewhat narrow boxes may help you fit a larger litterbox into a smaller space like a hallway where you still need room to walk past. Tall-sided bins can make useful boxes for cats who don’t squat far enough when using the litterbox and end up going over the side. Make sure that if you choose a high-sided litterbox that your cat can comfortably get in and out. Small kittens and older, arthritic cats, may not be able to get in to take care of business if they have to make a jump every time.

At our house, we have both a regular litterbox and a clear plastic storage bin next to it.

Plastic Storage Tote

Similar to the clear storage bin, plastic storage totes come in a number of shapes and sizes. You can get totes so large that they are marketed to store artificial Christmas trees. Like some of the taller storage bins, be sure that your cat can easily exit and enter the tote after it contains litter to prevent their avoiding it, too. Your local home improvement store has shelves and shelves of bins in all kinds of sizes.

You can use the tote or bin as-is, or customize it further by cutting an entrance into it to create a lower step-in entry but high sides. this custom-converted storage tote was made for our friend Timmy and his roomates.

Wading Pool

Hard plastic wading pools, intended for children to splash in during hot summer months, can offer big kitties lots of space. You can buy them at various big box stores and even some grocery stores during the spring and summer months, and they range in size from 36″ to 60″ across. Keep in mind that these can be hard to come by during the winter, and if you are worried you may need to discard your old pool and get another one, consider buying and storing an extra. Also, the plastic of these pools is unlikely stand up well if you try to relocate a full litter pool, so make sure you have a final location in mind before filling it with litter.

No matter what you choose, there are lots of options to make sure that your cat’s litterbox is big enough to keep him taking care of business in the right location!

How to Build a Cat Tree

Pierre: We’re going to let the head peep write this post, because the idea of our cat tree being torn apart was too much to bear, and we all looked away. Only she knows what happened when our cat tree was refurbished, so we’ll let her tell how it worked.

It had been over fifteen years since the rug on the old cat tree had been replaced. The recarpeting job meant completely disassembling the tree, which was a great opportunity to capture photos of how to build a cat tree.

Materials

This cat tree was originally over-engineered with much heavier and higher quality materials than you usually find in a commercially-available cat tree, but it has lasted over 15 years, including five moves, two of which were at the mercy of professional interstate movers. You could substitute other materials, but our tree is made of the following:

A 44 x 24″ sheet of 3/4″ thick Plywood cut into:
- 24 x 28″ (for base)
- 16 x 11″ (for top)
- 16 x 13″ (for middle tier)
  (Hint: Your local home improvement store will cut pieces to size for you when you purchase the wood there. When I originally built the tree, I didn’t know anyone with a saw. You don’t have to have one, either!)

An 8′ length 4 x 4 (which is actually 3 1/2 x 3 1/2″, something that people like me who don’t usually do carpentry find puzzling), cut into:
- 48″
- 26.25″
- 21.25″
Carpet
I bought a 4.5 foot length of a 6′ wide carpet for this project at the local home improvement store. The previous carpet that lasted fifteen years was thick and had a padded backing. This carpet is thinner and doesn’t have a backing. It is easier to manipulate the thinner carpet, but it won’t last as long.
Sisal rope
The uprights of the cat tree were already wrapped since this was a refurbishment, so I can’t say how much you need. I can promise you’ll use more than you expect. This post doesn’t go over how to wrap the sisal, but I talked a little about a sisal refurbishment in a previous post.

Also used in this project:

White glue (like Elmer’s)
Staple Gun with both 1/4″ and 1/2″ staples
You might be able to get away with just 1/2″ staples, but it’s a lot easier to staple the 1/4″ staples through a single thickness of carpet and use the 1/2″ only when you have to staple through multiple thicknesses
Drill with a Phillips head driving bit. A magnetic drive guide helps keeps screws straight but isn’t necessary.
Long screws (2 1/2″)

Preparation

Cut up the carpet to the appropriate size. I honestly didn’t measure, so I can’t give exact sizes, but make sure it wraps well around each piece of wood. After cutting the carpet, to prevent it from fraying, brush on a thick bead of white glue (I used Elmer’s) and make sure that it gets down into the fabric of the carpet edge so that it holds the little bits that might tend to fray. I used two layers of glue, to be sure I really got it down in there. I’m told that fabric glue might have been a better choice, but Elmer’s seems to work (and I didn’t know about the fabric glue until later). Let it dry completely. I clipped it to a line and let it dry overnight, until the glue had dried clear.

Do a rough assembly of parts and use a pen or pencil to mark where the upright posts of the cat tree meet the base. You’ll use this as the bottom of the platform, to guide you where to put the posts. Having a friend on hand to help hold things together at this point is helpful, because it’s like putting Jenga back together again, only the pieces are heavy. The goal of this step is to make sure that when you attach the upright pieces, you know where they should go so that you don’t attach upright pieces too far apart for the upper tiers to reach across them.

Assembly

Lay the largest piece of plywood on the piece of carpet cut for it and wrap the carpet around the edges. Use the staple gun to attach the carpet partway along the bottom, but don’t attach it all the way. Leave the parts where you drew the locations for the uprights unstapled for now so that you can attach the carpet over them last and cover any protruding screw heads to protect your floor.

Now the tricky part starts. Use something to prop the upright post so that it lays flat but is the appropriate distance from the edge of the base. We used scrap wood that was left over from a previous project. Then position the first upright post in place against the base and screw through the base into it. Use at least three or four screws to be sure that it’s really secure. Remember, your cat is going to be launching on and off of this thing, so keeping it sturdy is important.

Turn the base and attach the second post to it the same way. It helps if you can support the already-attached post, since it’s heavy and can make the base unwieldy. A step ladder proved a good height to prop the existing post while the second one was attached.

Once both posts are attached to the base, finish folding the rug around the bottom of the base and staple it securely. You can use a hammer to really knock the staples flat and make sure they won’t scratch your floor.

Next, lay the remaining platforms on their respective pieces of carpet. Fold the carpet around them and staple securely. You will need the 1/2″ staples for the places that the carpet overlaps in several thicknesses. Again, you can use a hammer to make sure that the staples are flush with the wood.

Position the corner of the middle platform on the shorter post and screw it on.

If you drive the screws directly down into the carpet and tighten them flush, they will vanish into the texture of the carpet, and they won’t pose a hazard to the cats when they use the tree.

You want to make sure that nothing is sticking up or through the platforms that could poke up and injure a cat climbing on the tree, and also make sure that all screws and other hardware are flush with the wood so that they don’t pose any kind of an injury hazard. Having a tree hurt them is a sure way to prevent a cat from ever using it again.

(This is the point in the project where Florida’s daily 4pm rainstorm arrived several hours early, and the whole project had to relocate to the garage. I only took a couple photos in the garage because I may overshare a lot of things, but my messy garage is not one of them.)

Attach the corner of the small, top platform to the tall pole.

Now you have the middle platform attached to the shorter pole and the top platform attached to the tall pole. This allows you to adjust the location of the final pole so that it spans the distance between the middle and top platforms.

Screwing them in is a little tricky. This would have been easier if the rain hadn’t driven us indoors, so I don’t have photos of the attachment process. Screw the top of the pole into the top platform, then lay down and screw up through the middle platform to screw the bottom of the pole securely to the middle platform.

If the cat tree was being made from scratch, the final step would be to wrap the poles in sisal rope. Since since this was a refurbishment, they were already wrapped, and the cat tree could go back into the house.

The result…

Newton: This doesn’t smell quite like my cat tree.

Newton: Hey, Pierre, what do you think?

Pierre: *sniff sniff* You’re right. This doesn’t smell the same.

Pierre: It’s acceptable. But it’s going to take some time for it to smell the right way. Don’t do that to my tree again soon, okay?

Special thanks to the manpeep for his help with recarpeting the cat tree and for doing all the stuff with power tools. The project went much faster with his help!

Cat Tree Refurbishment

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.