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Tajar Mahal

Cat tower project

In March of this year we picked out a cat off Craigslist from a couple nearby who fosters cats rescued from high kill shelters. This little orange guy was considered unadoptable by Kings County Animal Shelter due to blindness in one eye. We renamed him Tajar (or Tajer or Tadger) and fell instantly in love with his sweetness. His visual disability does not slow him down and he's the most athletic and stretchy mini-beast I've known. We decided he needed a tower to climb, his first birthday gift for August 11th.

We sketched out our plan. We wanted it to include a bed level, a top lookout level, as well as multiple scratching surfaces and a spot for replaceable cardboard scratching pads since that was so far his favorite thing to scratch on. In order to not create more visual obstructions looking out to the garden, the height of the levels were determined by the heights of the window panes in the back door. We made notes of the tools we would need to borrow from the Santa Rosa Tool Library.

Cat tower project

I wanted to use repurposed or scrap materials as much as possible. We picked out the materials and began cutting, sanding, staining, and assembling.

Cat tower project

While watching TV, Rick and I took turns carefully wrapping cordage around the 4x4 post that was to become one of the back legs. We used a roll that I had sitting around of grass cord on the bottom section and hemp cord (the only material we purchased for this project) to complete the top section of the post. Our hands and forearms were tired and sore after wrapping that heavy post!

Very curious what we were creating, he needed to test it periodically throughout the project.

Cat tower project

Rick cut notches in the two back posts to hold the middle shelf in place. The right post is a length of rough-cut redwood that was removed from the exterior of the house during remodeling last year. The middle leg and step post are scraps of sapele mahogany left over from putting trim around the garage doors. I had sections of foam padding removed from a former loft bed headboard that I had made and then disassembled when moving. We got a new cardboard scratcher refill to put in the frame I cut into the bottom plywood level using a jigsaw tool. There are three adjustable feet screwed up through the bottom into the three supporting posts. The feet were removed from some garage tool cabinets in order to put wheels on them.

Cat tower project

I traced out patterns on newsprint to aid in cutting fabric we picked out from my crafts stash.

Cat tower project

In order to make them removable, washable or replaceable, I used velcro to attach the padding to the tower. One side of the velcro is sewn to the fabric wrap-around tabs, the other side glued to the underside of the plywood levels.

Cat tower project

The middle level has a contoured padding for a bed. We picked out some batik fabric I acquired in Bali.

Cat tower project

Tajer gets very upset when he sees birds through the window, and does vicious damage to the feather toy we play with, so I joke that he hates birds. As a poke at him we centered the birds on his bed.

He doesn't seem to mind.

Cat tower project

We are all very happy how it turned out and how well he uses it, all the sleeping and scratching surfaces, as well as actually climbing from the floor up the cord wrapped post to the top level as a more adventurous route up.

Cat tower project

building (6), cat (7), crafts (22), degree (18), design (1), diy (8), furniture (2), sewing (5), sustainable (7), tajer (1), wood-working (6)

Crafts (23), Degree (59), How To (4)

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